Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s a perfectly ordinary, if not slightly mundane day when Wilbur’s life changes forever. He has no clue when he sets out with his mother on their small shuttle that this simple trip is going to lead him to a piece of himself that he doesn’t yet know he is missing.

He plugs the coordinates of their meeting point into the navigation, claws tapping as a distracted tune whistles from the spaces between his jaws. He lets out a hiss at the travel estimate that appears above the holo-map. 

Normally he doesn’t mind long excursions, but this one is just so tedious. He knows his brother shoved this one off him with the excuse that they need to be ‘diplomatic’, but that’s a load of phantling spittle. Techno is perfectly capable of not killing a bitch for a couple of hours, and that’s really all that this outing entails. They need to show up, greet the clients, take their pay and seal their continued business with a nod - that’s it.  

But of course that’s the problem - none of them want to do this boring, routine shit. The Syndicate is a renowned underground operation that does good work dealing with intergalactic corruption and protecting their people. There’s no end of excitement in the family business - whether it be undercover missions deep in Imperial space, raiding enemy bases blaster first, or tracking down back-stabbing moles through high-traffic airways on heavily-monitored planets. 

This does, however, make equally necessary work like keeping up trade relations unbearably dull in comparison. Wilbur’s still upset about it, though. Because Techno always gets out of it with the same damn excuses. 

Techno and Phil are typically sent out for jobs that require intimidation, while Wilbur and Kristin tend to handle diplomacy. In other words, Techno and Phil go out when someone needs to be made an example of, while Kristin and Wil go to ensure they never find the bodies. Of course sometimes their reputation precedes them and it never has to come to that.

This does not mean that any of them are any more or less capable of seeing out basic tasks, no matter what Techno tries to say.

“Wil, stop pouting,” his mother’s voice chides him from behind, causing the phantom to startle in his seat.

He turns around to her with a glare - not a pout - and lets out a disgruntled click. His tail flicks with displeasure. She smiles and shakes her head, tumbling matter flaring out as she laughs.

Kristin is beautiful. Galaxies paint her eyes and flow through the dark matter that spills from the top of her head all the way to her waist. The air seems to always drift around her, causing her flowy clothes and matter to dance gracefully back and forth. 

His parents tell Wilbur he resembles her, but he can’t help but feel like he is her shadow. Fitting for a phantom. 

With Phil being an elytrian, Wil could honestly pass as their blood - his featureless, semi-transparent wings, yellow eyes and dark claws appear to be some muted, muddled combination of the two. 

Not like Techno, who stands out starkly from the rest of his family, owning his pink fur, large tusks, blood-red eyes and hooves with impassive pride. Sometimes Wilbur wishes he was a piglin, just for the boldness of it. 

But then he remembers their ventures to the Nether sector - the way the heat crept into every clammy crevice of his skin, eating away at their engines and forcing them to shorten their trip, lest they break down and end up stranded and sweltering as they wait for death. 

Techno always teases him for being so weak to the heat, but Wilbur knows that if his brother were to set one foot on his home planet, the piglin would drop into hibernation in seconds. Their most frequent fights are over temperature settings.

Most people at first glance think his mother is a starborne, which is reasonable given that celestials are incredibly rare, and they do share certain ancestries and traits with starbornes. 

But this is to say that most people underestimate her. 

Not that they’re not on guard - starbornes are no joke. They take the utmost caution and always behave with respect. But they anticipate the raw, volatile, short-lived explosion of a star’s child should they turn and earn her ire. That is where they falter. 

All beings are made from tiny pieces of the universe, but it lives in her - they are one. Her people were born in its creation and with every passing, creation is forever changed. But it is no swift thing. Celestial’s hold within them the power of calamity, making them as feared as they are fearful. 

His mother has often mourned the remnants of her people, having always been rarest but never quite so sparing. She tells them of the universe of old, and all the wonderful charm she misses from when all her siblings still roamed as tangible beings. Wilbur knows she gets lonely despite their company. 

She’s always sworn off creating any children of her own, not wanting to damn a child to outlive not only all their loved ones but the world as they know it. That always distressed Wilbur, and he asked her once if she was going to have to live forever without them someday. 

But she assured him that they would never be apart because they are soul bound. A part of them was once a part of her, so when they pass, they will be a part of her again and never leave. 

But being soul bound is not unique to celestials - Wilbur and Techno are soul bound to each other, after all. It just means they’re people who share a bond tying them together, going all the way back to when the universe first came to be. 

In a poet’s words, they’re meant to be.

Wil remembers the day he met Techno like it was yesterday. He watched his father’s ship approach the landing pad, and suddenly his clawed feet were digging into the earth as he ran. His wings flared out and he took off, overcome with the need to get to the descending vessel as fast as possible.

These feelings made no sense until the hatch opened as his gaze found the blood-red eyes of his soul bound twin. They were both born on the same hour of the same day, a whole universe apart.

The phantom was too young to remember much of how he felt before meeting Techno, but he knows for certain that in that moment, he’d never felt so whole.

And perhaps it’s because he can’t remember that he’s never fully realized the space still missing inside of him. He can’t recall the emptiness from before, so he can’t recognize the taste of it that lingers.

He doesn’t understand what it is that pulls at his chest, beckoning like a siren’s call. Their engines are plenty full enough for the journey ahead, there’s no need to stop yet. He double and triple checks their levels, the state of their repairs - searching for any string of logic to the urging in his head.

The nearest planet is a mining station, full of trading transit and cheap mechanics. Good for a refueling or repair - even a browse. But they’re on a time crunch. There’s no need to stop here, no reason to delay their whole trip for nothing.

Wilbur waves his hand, dismissing the planet’s holo with a hiss. Why is he spending so much time considering this nonsensical decision? Of course they’re not going to stop! There’s no argument to be made here!

Something clutches inside the phantom’s chest, like a fist squeezing around his heart. He flinches, claws instinctively reaching for the manual controls. He stops short, standing abruptly as he struggles to force his hands to pull back.

Phantoms don’t strictly need to breathe, but oxygen can help with regulation and so in moments of extreme stress or fatigue they can find themselves heaving for air. Wilbur is trembling as he finds himself doing so, startling as his hands start to flicker from material to immaterial.

Where is any of this coming from? Every lingering scrap of his logical mind begs for him to seek out his mother, but the rest of him absolutely screams for him to grasp the controls and touch down onto the mining planet.

Logstd’shr - nothing comes to Wilbur’s mind from previous jobs or Syndicate relations. It lingers on the outskirts of three different sectors, not notable enough to be claimed by any one of them. It’s the perfect planet for seedy business and low-lying outlaws, but nothing more.

And yet, Wilbur finds himself taking the controls, canceling their previous navigation as he guides their shuttle into the little planet’s atmosphere. As they fly in, he nearly loses visual in the ruddy fog. The air quality readings report nothing terribly toxic, but it’s definitely not an environment any oxygen-breathing being would want to spend too long in.

Just as he eases them towards a spare landing plot, Wil hears the hiss of the bridge door opening and a questioning sound from Kristin.

“Wil? What’s going on, why are we landing?”

A few distressed chitters slip out involuntarily as the phantom searches for any possible response, unable to tear his eyes off the descent or claws away from the controls. His breathing hasn’t settled, and the screaming in his head is only getting louder and more insistent.

He has to get off this shuttle. He has to.

“Wilbur?” his mother’s voice pitches with concern, thrumming with an incomprehensible melody.

The shuttle meets the dusty, reddened metal of the port and Wilbur is shooting from his seat not two seconds after. His mother calls after him but he can barely hear her over the pull. 

He catapults out of the hatch, immediately flinching as light spills into his unprotected eyes. Normally the phantom would take the proper precautions and wear a ray shield to cover his sensitive eyes and skin - perhaps even pull on an oxy-mask to prevent choking on the dust as he’s currently doing.

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that there is no logic behind Wilbur’s current actions, just an inexplicable impulse. He stumbles onto the landing pad, vision dancing with vibrant yellows and oranges as he tries to squint past the growing sting. At least the thick dust is blocking enough of the UV rays so that the phantom’s skin is only tingling, rather than burning off.

His feet seem to move on their own, as if guided by something beyond his simple senses. Finally his eyes begin to adjust and reveal to him the near-desolate docking lot he wanders through. There are only a few stragglers in view, most lounging as their ships refuel, taking drinks and drags of cheap vices. 

None of them catch the phantom’s interest as he continues to hurry towards the busier part of the port. There he can see several temporary booths constructed of primitive materials and draped in once-colourful cloth. He can see a large group of dust-riders marked with a shared symbol, likely signaling the presence of a local gang of either travelling traders or - much more likely - poachers or pirates.

His suspicions are all but confirmed when he takes note of some sort of altercation. A number of figures are shouting, throwing crates around and fighting amongst each other. They’re barking orders, calling around, threatening cowering locals - they’re searching for something.

Almost as soon as he realizes it, Wilbur feels the pull inside him so strongly it almost knocks him off his feet. His head whips around and he fixes his gaze on a small, square crate a few clicks away, laying innocuously in front of a dozen others, entirely separate from the area that the gang is currently searching in.

There, the pull whispers to him, and he’s never felt so certain of anything in his life. What is waiting for him there? He has no idea - but he’s about to find the answer.

Turning transparent, Wilbur soars through dustless space and crouches down eagerly before the crate. His heart is absolutely singing at being so close to this pull, filling him with a blooming warmth the phantom isn’t used to, especially while immaterial. He reverts his form back, making sure to crouch low and stay out of the gang’s eyeline.

His claws reach out eagerly, grasping the lid that is already partially pried open - more than likely recently broken into and then closed again. The soft sound of distressed panting meets Wilbur’s ears as he slowly lifts the greasy, dusty metal.

A low croon slips unbidden from the phantom’s throat as soon as he lays eyes on the treasure inside. The roundest, brightest blue eyes stare back from under the matted tangles of gold. They are wide and flooded with awe and terror. Wilbur instantly knows that this was what pulled him here - this creature has been missing from his heart, and he somehow wasn’t even aware of it until this moment! 

And despite the fear and tension swarming the little creature, he thinks his treasure knows this, too. 

The creature is pale but strangely almost pink, though it has no fur like a piglin shoat should, only adorned with filthy rags. It doesn’t have any hooves or claws or any visible tusks either - absolutely nothing to defend itself with! The thought makes Wilbur whine in distress, and he is immediately greeted with an unquestionably hostile display.

His treasure’s shoulders tuck up, harmless hands curling tight, back pressing harder against the far corner of the crate and it growls, mouth pulling back to reveal rows of teeth. The teeth are tiny and flat, and should by all means not be any indication of a predator, except that they are stained with blood.

It’s at this moment that Wilbur notices the metallic collar around the creature’s neck, still attached to a broken string of thick chain. An icy rage washes over the phantom and he struggles to compose his expression, not wanting to frighten his treasure any further.

But before he can make another move, his attention is drawn by a sharp, rattling hiss. His treasure all but collapses in on itself at the sound, terror swallowing it instantly. Leathery wings flaring protectively, the phantom turns his gaze to meet the yellow, slitted eyes of one of the searching barbarians. 

The figure approaches with haste, lumbering, orange-scaled form towering high but awkwardly slouched. A droegan - covered with viscous scars and clothed in tattered rags that are stained the same ruddy orange as the dust in the air and marked with a matching symbol to the ones on the dust-riders. 

The droegen’s lips are pulled back in a snarl, showing countless rows of sharp teeth, same shape and deadliness as the hundreds of spindly needles adorning it from head to tail tip. He has three prosthetic claws on one hand with added barbs to make them more brutal and deadly. None of this would be a threat to Wilbur under normal circumstances, but he can’t turn other creatures immaterial with him - and so he’s suddenly found himself in a serious crisis.

“Ey!” the droegen hollers in rough Galactic. “Ut ya got ‘ere?”

And it’s not the most promising sign, but even a basic understanding of Galactic is enough to give Wilbur an opening to use his most powerful tool - diplomacy. 

But the fact that the brute didn’t just shout in Drackish and expect the help of a translator is not a good sign for the droegen having one himself. He’ll have to stick to simple words and lean into universal body language.

Drawing up to his full height - which pales in comparison to enderian standards, but to most others is quite impressive - Wil flares his wings out to their full span and fixes the droegen with a stern glare of warning.

“I don’t think that is any of your concern,” he declares, low and clear with just the hint of a growl under the words.

The droegen stops short, stumbling for a moment as he takes in Wilbur’s stance. The brute’s claws grip tight around the handle of the crudely-painted blaster at his hip. The hostility is clear, but so is the hesitation. This is a brutal killer, but he at least seems to have enough intelligence to not want to tangle with a phantom.

“‘E’re lookin’ fer a missin’ critter,” he says, eyeing the crate pointedly.

Wilbur feels a hiss crawl up his throat as those yellow eyes linger near his treasure. His treasure, who is curled up so scared in the corner of the crate, like if he tucks in tight enough, he’ll be able to slip into the shadows like a phantling.

“Look elsewhere.”

Those yellow eyes narrow, glimmering with deadly light. At the same time, a couple other figures take note of the confrontation and start to make their way over. Shades of the Abyss… Wilbur has to do something quick. 

He could make quick work of one brute, but the whole gang would be a little trickier. And how could he guarantee his treasure’s safety in such a reckless scuffle? How can he guarantee it in a retreat? Shit.

“This is your final warning - walk away now and you will lose nothing more,” the phantom vows, shifting around the crate so he’s only an arms length from his treasure.

The droegen recoils in offense, growl sputtering with fuming heat. He exclaims in Drackish something that translates to a string of foul insults.

“‘At ‘uman’s property ‘f Ess-em-pi! ” he howls, like Wilbur just spat in the face of a sacred title.

Ah. He’s heard of this so-called ‘Essempi’ - it’s been a rising irritation at the outskirts of Syndicate business for a short while now. Never stepping too far out of line to garner serious attention, but always up to some sort of scheming. 

Perhaps it’s time they finally squash this pest problem. Not at this moment, of course - right now he has to get out of here and tend to his treasure. But afterwards, once they all arrive safely to base, he’s sure Techno will be eager to gather their finest warships and head out with him to eradicate a growing fungus.

The phantom is so focused on these fantasies of revenge that he doesn’t even register how the droegen described the creature in the crate.

“You’re mistaken,” Wilbur retorts easily, raising his voice so that all the rest of the gathering figures can hear him well. “This treasure is property of the Syndicate! ”

The effect is immediate, washing over the vicinity like a sickly chill. The droegen freezes stiff, the first flash of true fear appearing in his widened gaze. For a moment, Wilbur hopes his reputation will spare him and his treasure any further issue, but then that shock and fear is swallowed up by rage and challenge as the brute shows his teeth again.

“Nah, yera mis-take ‘ere, gortakk,” flicking the safety off his blaster, he all but spits the last word in Drackish, Wilbur’s translator helpfully defining it as the informal term for ‘friend’.

And now Wilbur might not be thoroughly familiar with droegen culture, but he’s pretty sure he can tell a thinly-veiled threat from an attempt at making peace, and every social cue he’s currently receiving is telling him that was definitely the former.

A quick scan over the area counts twelve enemies, at least three of them are potential problems - he easily spots an enderian looming over the rest and the unmistakable folded wings of an elytrian, which are a serious pain for an escape. Far more nerve-wracking, there’s also a figure with greenish skin and a heavy-duty air filter, indicating that they’re likely a cree. The risk of potentially engaging in a battle with explosives so near by his treasure is nauseating.   

But what choice does he have? He hardly has the luxury of options. These brutes are going to engage and he has to fight or flee. Despite this fact and the rapidly dwindling timeframe he’s working with, Wilbur can’t seem to untrap his mind from decision paralysis.

His chest begins to heave again as his claws twitch. Fight or flee, fight or flee, fight or–     

All at once, the droegen draws and fires his blaster, and brilliant flashes light up from too many barrels to count. Instinct takes over and Wilbur is immaterial, hardly feeling the slight tinge of heat as the photons breeze through his ghostly form. He checks back in a panic but is relieved to find the crate was sturdy enough to protect his treasure from the blasts.

The decision is made then and there - not a single shot missed the echo of his body, the majority passing directly through his vitals. These poachers are far too skilled to risk his treasure in an escape. 

Wilbur sinks into the dusty ground, rushing with dizzying speed to the backside of the droegen - who is now on high alert, blaster swinging erratically as he shuffles towards the pile of crates. The phantom rears his claws back and slashes for the meat of the brute’s legs, turning material at the very moment he makes contact.

Scales lift and scatter, flesh tearing open with a rush of yellow blood. He’s immaterial again before the droegen can even scream. But Wilbur still flinches in alarm when a photon meets the dirt beneath his chest just a split second after.

Spawn of the Abyss!  He may be just a little in over his head. The droegen falls to his knees with a sharp cry, but swiftly twists with his blaster waving and free hand at the ready. Some figures move while others remain stock still, eyes searching and snipers raised. 

He should probably deal with them next, unless he wants to keep pushing his luck on getting shot. But Wilbur’s thoughts all screech to a stop at the sound of a telltale vwoop!

Panic exploding in his chest, the phantom whips around to the sight of the lanky enderian looming over the small, square crate, violet particles still scattering as the eyes that glow that same shade are turned down, fixed on the treasure inside. His treasure.

One hand grips a large blaster and the other reaches long, sharp claws down into the crate. A blood-curdling screech tears from Wilbur and the phantom is flying, claws out and jaws open to destroy the threat. 

His claws turn material as they sink into the bastard’s throat, yellow eyes glowing, fangs bared and wings flaring like the terror of the shadows that Wilbur is. It’s the last thing that any soul can hope to see, and by the Abyss, the enderian sees it - his last moments choke on blood, fear, and vengeance as his eyes glaze over to nothing.

That’s when Wilbur registers the burn in his chest and side. He’s already heading for the ground with the crumpling, spindly limbs of his vanquished prey, but he suddenly finds he can’t move his wings to soften his fall. He tries to turn immaterial to avoid the pain, but it meets him anyway.

Strangely, he’s staring at his clawed hands and they don’t appear to have changed form at all. The burning is everywhere now, preventing him from taking any breaths to clear his head. There’s so much noise and he swears someone calls his name, but that can’t be. 

The ground rattles, there are screams. He can’t move, and even his vision is starting to fail. He can’t see the battlefield anymore - just the crate. The crate that holds his treasure. And… something is crawling out of it.

Oh. There you are. Wilbur can’t help the croon that builds up somewhere in his throat that he can’t reach. In the dancing, dizzying, too-brightness, he can see those big, blue eyes. He can see the curling gold and those harmless hands reaching.

Wait - what is his treasure doing? They must stay in the crate, where it's safe! With all the noise and the shaking it can’t possibly be safe right now! Wilbur has to protect the creature - if only he could get his arms or wings to move.

But… oh. His treasure is here now, pressing against him. Their tiny hands are clutching his shirt, and oh no - Those blue eyes are shining with some kind of moisture, mouth wobbling and face turning red. Wilbur doesn’t know much about this creature’s mannerisms, but they're clearly very upset.

A whine chokes out from the phantom and he curses his limbs for refusing to move. He wants nothing more than to wrap his treasure up and comfort them while they're hurting. But his whine only seems to make the creature more upset, and they start babbling louder in a higher pitch.

Belatedly, Wilbur’s translator seems to pick up speech and spit it out into the phantom’s brain. The words pass by in a haze, but what does catch his attention is the language reading. According to his implant, his treasure is speaking ‘English’, a human language - originating on Earth, a planet from an intergalactically restricted galaxy.  

In fact, his database is missing translations for a good chunk of this language, since it’s known only from observational study. The planet hasn’t even reached space travel. What in the Abyssal Depths were the Essempi doing to get their hands on a human?

“Wilbur! ” 

The phantom is torn from his spiraling thoughts and rocketed back into a present full of agony by the sound of his mother’s voice.

Oh… The past few minutes play backwards in his mind with sudden clarity at the revelation. Kristin is here - that explains the shakes and the screaming and the fact that his treasure is so mercifully unharmed. 

As for the burning rippling agony spilling from his core, he must have been shot. The photons likely hit his spine and one of the vital glands in his chest, perhaps elsewhere as well. Luckily it just missed both his twin hearts, or he would not be alive to be having this realization.

But he is alive, and his mother is here and his treasure is safe. Everything will be alright now.

It’s the last thought Wilbur has before he fades into darkness.

–

Ever since he was born, Tommy has never belonged anywhere.

He didn’t belong with his parents, that’s why they gave him away. He doesn’t belong at school, or with the other kids. He has yet to find any group or foster home that he belongs with - no matter how hard he tries, he always ends up just… not fitting. He’s too loud, too abrasive, too sensitive, too clumsy, too annoying, too hyper - too much.  

Sometimes, Tommy thinks he doesn’t belong on Earth. He always stares up at the stars at night, whispering a prayer that he doesn’t really understand. This feeling in his chest almost swallows him up whenever he does, squeezing the air from his lungs and tears from his eyes.

It’s this strange, painful something that only fuels the young boy’s certainty that he’s not meant to be here.  

He’s had to be careful about saying that sort of thing around his social worker or guardians, however. The last time he tried to explain this feeling to one of them, he was almost sent to a big place with wire fences and cameras everywhere.

And as nice as it would be to get out of the horrible cycles of awful foster homes, Tommy doesn’t think he could breathe in a place where he couldn’t escape outside at night, to climb up the trees and sit under the stars. No, he doesn’t mind getting tossed around from house to house as long as he can still have those moments. Those quiet nights that keep him sane. 

Sure, Cathy probably would say what he’s doing isn’t ‘safe’, wandering around the parks and streets late at night as an unarmed 8 year old. But he’s not defenseless or stupid - he knows what spots to avoid and when to leave. He knows how to shake a trail and he’s great and biting and screaming! He’s a big man and he wouldn’t let any weirdos ever get close!

And he didn’t - for three whole years Tommy never got attacked or taken by any strangers! He just… didn’t account for alien abduction.

In fact, before that day, Tommy was firmly in the camp of not believing aliens were real. But, well, it’s hard to argue with evidence when it quite literally picks him up by the hood of his sweater and stabs something sharp and cold into his neck.

Truthfully, he didn’t know it was aliens, then. He only figures that part out when he wakes up on a cold, hard table with piercing, white light shining down on his face. He is strapped down, surrounded by several figures in white suits who could not possibly be described as human.

One has boggled, insect-like eyes and a massive fleshy thing on its head that looks like a red-spotted mushroom. One looks like a big orange lizard, another has wings and claws, and another is literally a floating cube that is somehow still holding things. Another is green and way too tall and has a freaky gas mask and its limbs are all wrong and everything is all wrong and they’re all holding sharp, bloody tools and poking and prodding–

A scream is tearing from Tommy before he can think any further. He does everything he’s supposed to do - everything he was taught. He screams, he kicks and thrashes, and he bites. The screaming makes them all flinch back, the thrashing miraculously seems to tear his limbs free, and when his jaws clamp around the wiggling, fleshy appendages hovering near his face, they tear right off with a burst of acrid purple.

The rest becomes a blur. He fights valiantly, swinging limbs and snapping his jaws at anything that comes too close, but pain is splitting through his head and his vision won’t stop swaying. Eventually one of the aliens gets too close and before he can turn and stop them, another sharp spike pierces the meat of his shoulder and everything goes black.

When he wakes again, he can hardly get his limbs to move. Some strange tubes are hooked to his arms and stomach and something is pressed into his jaws, preventing him from speaking. It’s also preventing him from hurling out his own intestines from the horrified nausea flooding him. Whether that’s a win or not is hard to say.

The aliens are all making freaky chittering sounds and low groans but in the drifting of Tommy’s sluggish mind, he swears he almost hears words. He slips back under before long.

The next time he wakes is the worst by far. 

It’s cold and dark and everything hurts. He smells blood and tastes pennies and can hardly think past the pounding of his head. His muscles protest every slight movement but he can’t seem to stop shivering. His first conscious thought is a prayer to nothing in particular, begging to just pass out again.

That’s when he registers his restraints. His arms and legs are shockingly free, but Tommy can feel a cold band biting into the skin of his throat, just barely loose enough for him to breath. He forces his impossibly heavy eyelids to lift and through the dreary, blue, low light, he spots the glint of metal snaking over the gray, featureless floor he lies on. A chain.

And as if Tommy doesn’t feel enough like a caged animal, the boy realizes with a frigid wave that the press against his jaws is some sort of muzzle.

Instantly, despite the shrieks and groans of his battered body, he scrambles to life, pushing his upper body off the ground. As soon as he’s half sitting, the boy reaches a hand for his face immediately hitting the resistance of some kind of shield. 

He searches manically, grabbing at whatever strange, wiry straps seem to be holding this on his face and pulling. But as soon as he does so, hot, paralyzing pain explodes from the skin of his throat through his chest and out to his limbs, leaving him a screaming, fetal mess.

He has no idea how long the pain lasts - it feels like forever and a blink. But suddenly he’s gasping for air, body shuddering and twitching with aftershocks. The stinging heat doesn’t fade from his throat and tears trickle freely down the muzzle.

With a sharp crackle, a series of darkly melodic noises fill the room, dipping and swooping with the cadence of speech. Squeezing his eyes shut, Tommy tries to drown out the chilling sound of his alien captors and focus on breathing - but then he starts hearing words.

Well, maybe ‘hearing’ isn’t the right term, but there are words - English words - echoing in his brain, spoken by a voice Tommy doesn’t recognize. He can immediately attach the cunning, taunting voice to the alien noises he hears from whatever speaker it’s playing through.

Somehow, he can understand his captor.

So caught up in this alarming revelation, the boy almost completely misses what the alien actually said. What he catches is something along the lines of: “Good humans don’t fight against their bonds. ” Which immediately fills Tommy with equal parts icy terror and burning rage.

“I’m not a fucking pet, you fucking bitch!” he spits, with all the loud, abrasive, uncontainable vigor that his fosters always hated so much.

For his efforts, Tommy is gifted with another pulse of unbearable pain from his collar. He cries and chokes, once again curled up with his face pressed into the cold floor. As the pain relents, his hands almost instinctively twitch into matching middle fingers.

Another crackle and the alien’s voice is back. “Good humans are silent. ”

Prime, these bitch-ass aliens are just juiced-up versions of his worst foster homes, aren’t they? It takes everything in Tommy’s willpower to not immediately cuss them out again, not super eager to get hit with that horrible shock again. Instead he just lays where he is, nausea spilling over him in vicious waves.

He has no idea how much time passes before he’s jolted back to reality by the hiss of a door opening. Prying his stiff, aching body off the floor, Tommy faces his captor with a growl. He nearly loses every bit of nerve at the sight of it.

The figure looming over him is not familiar from the foggy scene before - it looks more akin to a cryptid jellyfish than any kind of humanoid. Glowing, neon green tendrils hang from a pure white sphere with strange markings, one of them resembling a stretched out x. It moves languidly through the air, like they’re deep under the ocean rather than - presumably - in some kind of spacecraft.

The markings suddenly flare with sickly green light, sending warping brightness through the glowing, swaying tendrils in tune with the eerie melody that is already queasily familiar to the boy.

“You are a fighter.” Tommy’s mind somehow translates, but the last word seems to get jumbled around, mixing with terms like ‘beast ’ and ‘weapon ’.

The boy just narrows his eyes, shuffling back and letting out another growl. The spherical head of the alien tilts creepily to the side, tendrils wandering out, reaching closer. Tommy tenses, fingers twitching. He might not be able to bite anymore, but those dumb things look squishy and weak. He’s sure he could scratch them open or tear them off if it came to it.

“Do you hunger, human? ”

Normally, a question like that would be interpreted as considerate, but Tommy has spent his whole life around people who never say what they mean. There is no question in the young boy’s mind that this alien is not merely asking if he wants to eat. Somehow, this is a threat, a taunt, and a test.

He makes no attempt to speak, ignoring the aching squeeze in his stomach. He doesn’t know if it’s been hours or days since he’s last eaten, but he won’t grovel to this bitch.

A glow ripples through the markings and tendrils once more, flooding the room with uneasy music. “Humans must be sustained. If you do not eat soon, you will die. ”

Once again, Tommy knows these words are not spoken out of concern for his well-being. The low chiming seems to tease him, rising almost like laughter. The alien turns away, the door sliding open once more. The impulse to escape fills the boy, but he can barely keep himself steady in a crouch. There is no hope for him to get far, especially with this wretched collar.

Before the door closes again, the alien’s head turns almost fully around, fixing on Tommy despite having no visible eyes. Then it speaks the words that become the boy’s reality for what feels like an eternity.

“Follow our commands and we will sustain you. ”

And Prime, does Tommy fight it. He tries so hard to refuse their game. But they are unfortunately, inevitably right - he is human. He despises it with every part of his being, but the only thing worse than being toted around as an alien’s pet is letting himself be beaten or starved to death by one. 

Because dammit, Tommy wants to live. He’s hardly gotten the chance at any point in his short life yet, so he’s going to fucking survive until he does. Shit, he spent his whole life wishing he could reach the stars and be free from Earth - as shitty as this abduction is, he’s at least got to be one step closer to that dream, right?

So he does as he’s told. Mostly. He obeys enough to stay alive, stubbornly remaining enough of a problem to feel like he’s paying his rotten captor’s back for their shittiness. He kills only about half of what they throw into his cell, barking at him to slaughter.

Most of the time he kills them to save his own skin, always a little bit shocked by how easily he can shatter jaws or send creatures flying. Any time they let him remove his muzzle, he’s sure to draw out the fight to relish the feeling. Unless they’ve thrown in someone that’s terrified of him.

It’s starting to become more common for other aliens to get tossed in his cell. They let out sounds of blatant distress, pounding and clawing at the locked door and trying to shrink as far away from him as possible. 

The latest time, it’s a silver and blue scaled creature with webbed hands and feet, pink fins and inky black eyes. Dark green hair like seaweed spills down over its face and body and it seems to be breathing through some sort of water tank.

The crackle splits the air and he’s given the command to remove the ‘mask’ and kill. The alien wails and presses pathetically into the farthest corner, still scratching and slamming against the door. Its void-like eyes somehow glisten with terror and pleading.

Tommy reaches back and in one swift move, tears the muzzle off his face. His jaw aches and his gums sting, relishing the temporary relief. He chucks the wretched thing at the ground with enough force to make it shatter. The shield protects it - it always does.

He turns to the blinking light where he knows his captors are staring back and bares his teeth, fists clenching tight. “Piss off!”

The burn bursts from his throat and he collapses to the ground with a winded groan. Some sort of yelp spills from the fish-like alien. Gritting his teeth, Tommy pushes himself off the floor as the speaker crackles again.

“Kill her, human. You will be sustained. ”

Swallowing blood and spit, Tommy lifts a shaky middle finger towards the light. It took them a while, but the aliens have started to pick up on the meanings of his gestures. At least all the ones that indicate defiance. 

He’s quickly sent to the ground again with another vicious shock.

This tired cycle continues until at last, Tommy passes out. They tell him when he wakes that the fish alien was tortured to death, her family hunted also. They starve him for days, giving him only water and shocking him every time he so much as growls.

“You are mine, human,” the creepy jellyfish alien declares, like it’s a fact that Tommy should just get through his thick skull already. “ This defiance is useless. ” 

His translator spits out other words like ‘stupid ’, ‘tiring ’ and ‘futile ’. The boy is all too familiar with those sorts of fights - he’s never been one to surrender them.

Time moves in a blur of blood, shocks and stomach pains. It’s not long before all the boy knows is cold and agony. He starts to crave the fights - they’re the only times he feels alive. 

He doesn’t know when it happens, but he starts to detach. Like it’s all a terrible dream and he’s just waiting to wake up. It makes the burn sting less, and tears blink away. He’s so hollow, but at least he’s not so horribly hungry anymore.

He’s drifting. When he lays on his back, staring up at the dark ceiling of his cell, the boy likes to imagine he’s staring at the stars again. He lets his mind drift to back then, the cool breeze rustling the leaves around him. The branch he sits on slowly creaks and somehow it sounds like Tommy’s heart. 

Those softly twinkling stars blur with his tears as a cry from deep within him bubbles up his throat. A cry into the night he wishes so desperately would be answered.

Sometimes, as he lays on the hard floor, Tommy swears he feels that same pulse. Almost like a rope around his heart, tugging towards something out there. Prime, he wishes he could really see the stars. 

He wishes that whatever he’s calling for could hurry up and save him already.

It’s one of those days where Tommy can’t bring himself to move a muscle when he hears the telltale hiss of the door. He still doesn’t move, far too apathetic for defensiveness. He waits for something to hit the floor - food, drink, or a target.

Instead, he hears that horrid melody. “Get up, human. We’re relocating. ”

The boy blinks, hesitating as if his translator malfunctioned and is going to give him a new sentence in a few moments. Instead, he gets a quick jolt through his collar, effectively peeling his body from the ground as he hisses irritation.

When he looks to the doorway, he sees that the jellyfish bitch isn’t alone. Fire lizard and mushroom bitch are with him, and the former is unlinking his chain from the wall and is holding it like a damn leash.

A dozen questions flood Tommy’s mind but he immediately stops himself, slowly following after his captors. They’re moving. They’re taking him out of his cell. This is his chance! He can’t blow this - he has to be perfectly patient, waiting passively until the most opportune moment to make his break for it.

First he’ll need to take care of this collar - he’ll hardly get far if he can be incapacitated at a single command. Over time he’s observed that the electric pulse he experiences doesn’t come straight from any point on the collar like a shock collar on Earth, because touching the chain will send an all new pulse through his body from his fingertips. He almost died once, and never made that mistake again.

He’s never seen any activation device for the shock and always assumed it’s somewhere in the observation room, or perhaps a chip in the aliens’ brains. He notes that Charmander is holding some kind of strap it’s attached to the chain rather than the chain itself, probably to avoid getting shocked himself.

Subtly, Tommy tries to get a better look at the strap as they walk through foreign, clinical, white halls. Luckily the bitch can’t seem to stop fiddling with his claws, so the boy manages to catch a glimpse of some sort of black circle with a button on it attached to the strap in its scaly palm.

Bingo! So it’s switch-activated, and that switch has to be attached to the chain!

The boy struggles to keep his excitement contained at the revelation, making sure to grumble and tug on the chain just enough to be unsuspicious. He gets snapped at for his efforts and growls back. They give him a quick jolt and harshly yank him along. Tommy hides a grin.

It’s when the troupe steps off the long hatch and into the glaring light of two suns that the boy finds his moment.

The air is thick and near opaque with red dust, instantly clogging Tommy’s lungs despite the muzzle’s protection. He crouches low, arms raised to shield his eyes. He ends up practically crawling over the rust-coloured dirt, the aliens thinking nothing of it.

Their biggest mistake. The boy almost trips over a stone - loose, solid, and just barely small enough to be held with one hand. He scoops it up without slowing, heart hammering in his chest. Mushroom bitch walks beside him while jellyfish bastard floats up with Charmander, who holds his chain from ahead, leading him. 

None of them have their gazes on him at this moment, too focused on looking ahead or keeping the dust on their visors instead of their eyes. It’s time.

With a sharp breath, Tommy raises the rock above his head with both hands and in one swift motion, brings it down on the chain with all his strength. Rock and chain-link shatter and Tommy doesn’t waste a single second in celebration. He takes off before his translator even picks up words from the garbled, startled sounds.

Unbelievable, suffocating pain clutches his chest as he sprints through a roided-up dust storm, but Tommy doesn’t let his trembling, aching limbs slow for a moment. He tears off the muzzle as he flees, letting the wind sweep it away and nearly whoops in victory.

Then his toes crunch against something hard and unyielding and he’s sent barreling forward. He tumbles head over heels into what feels like burning hot sand, especially when his face plows in and he gets a mouthful of it.

Dazed and winded, Tommy forces himself off the ground, shaking with relentless hacking and coughing. Shit! He tucks into the crook of his elbow, eyes squeezing shut as he still tries desperately to stand on his feet. His tongue is coated in awful, smoke-flavoured graininess and there could be no greater mercy right now than a sip of water.

“Get back here! ”

He’s jolted back into primal panic as a clawed hand grasps his shoulder, immediately piercing with a slight sting. With a feral shriek, Tommy kicks out, twisting around when the grip loosens and his attacker - Charmander, of course - falters.

The boy’s elbow connects harshly with the alien’s chest and he hears something crack. Seeing Charmander’s boggled expression, Tommy decides it’s incapacitated enough for him to run again. He gets two steps before he spots mushroom bitch diving for his flank - gross, needled fingers outstretched.

He knows that he can’t let those needles pierce him or he’ll pass out like all those times before. So Tommy swerves, grabbing the alien’s left limb with both hands and lunging with his teeth. He’s pretty sure there are no bones in this motherfucker to break, so he opts for the next best thing - biting a chunk out of it!

And he’s right, it doesn’t have any bones, but it sure does have blood. Lots of it - blue and oddly sweet-smelling, though the taste is horrendous. Like spoiled blue cheese mixed with garbage.

Thankfully the fucker screeches and doubles over in pain so Tommy doesn’t have to take any more bites out of him. Then the boy spots jellyfish bitch.

Now, as much as Tommy would absolutely relish in the catharsis of tearing that bastard to shreds, something about it carries an intrinsic warning to not fucking try that. So he doesn’t. 

He turns and runs, this time keeping his head down and his eyes peeled for any rocks that could trip him up. He runs, lungs heaving on coals and legs burning with the forces of at least triple the suns in the sky.

The boy gets so caught up in running that he nearly slams right into a wall. Or, rather, a leg of some kind of spaceship. 

Rubbing his eyes in a vain attempt to clear them off dust and sand, Tommy tries to take in his new surroundings. He seems to be in some kind of town, or space marketplace. It’s not what he would have imagined a space town or market to look like, since it’s honestly more comparable to a shabby ghost town in the middle of a red desert.

But there are aliens wandering around, and lots of spaceships, and aliens appear to be trading items and leaning on their shuttles like adults lean on their cars while they wait for the gas to fill up. Some even look like they’re smoking - which, Tommy doesn’t know why anyone living here would want more shit clogging their lungs, but to each their own. 

Maybe they don’t have lungs, and he’s the only one actually suffering in this awful storm. That seems pretty likely - the universe seems to love to spite Tommy.

Shaking his head, Tommy focuses on his priorities. His captors are going to come looking for him. He has to find a way to get off this planet. 

But he doesn’t exactly know how alien society works - would anyone in a dingy market like this take pity on a human captive, or would he just be promptly returned to his ‘owners’? Or, even more exciting, shot on site?

No, he can’t risk it. But it’s hardly like he can steal a spaceship and pilot it out of here. Stowing away it is! He just needs to find a way to get on a ship without being spotted… He scans the area, inching closer and closer while ducking behind whatever cover he can find.

He stiffens, gaze catching on several piles of sealed boxes being loaded onto a massive, almost square shuttle. The closer pile is milling with aliens, moving rhythmically through the clearly-practiced motions of picking up the boxes and handing them over to be placed neatly within the large spacecraft.

But the pile across the path has yet to be touched, and not a single alien seems to be paying it any mind. Tommy crouches low, on hands and knees. His feet don’t dig as much into the ground any more as he readies himself, breathing deep.

He waits for an opening, when all the backs are turned, and shoots off. He’s across the path in a literal blink, stumbling in surprise and he falls behind the cover of the boxes. He thought he was shockingly quick during his fights in his cell, but this is ridiculous.

Catching his breath, Tommy carefully shifts towards one of the boxes. He can see now that they’re thick and metallic, seemingly locked with some sort of code. Hopefully that won’t be like the shield on the muzzle or he’s got a big problem.

There’s a tiny gap between the box and its lid, just wide enough for Tommy to pry his fingers under. With one more glance to his dusty surroundings, the boy tenses and lifts. The lid resists for a total of two seconds before it pops open with a harsh, robotic beep - like an alarm that had a seizure and immediately died.

Ducking instantly, Tommy waits with bated breath for any sign that he was overheard. A minute passes. Two. Three minutes pass and the boy finally lets himself relax.

Slowly, carefully, he eases the lid up until it’s just high enough for him to slip through. He gets inside with just a slight jostle and quickly pulls the lid down, swallowing the box into darkness. It doesn’t quite close all the way, but he prays it will go unnoticed.

His back-up plan is to bite and tear his way through the aliens until he can find a new place to hide and maybe try again.

All of a sudden, Tommy loses his breath. He clutches his chest in confusion, tears pricking his eyes. What is happening? Is this box vacuum sealed or something? Is he suffocating? No, that can’t be it, he couldn’t even close it all the way.

Then what– The boy practically doubles over despite his already cramped, crouched position. His fist tightens, squeezing the ragged, dirty shirt he can’t remember putting on. It hits him suddenly - what this is. It’s that damned pull.  

It’s never felt so strong before. He can barely breath, body itching with the urge to move. To get up, to run, to jump into the embrace of someone he’s always been meant to meet.

Someone…? But no, he can’t! It’s not safe, he has to stay here and get away from this planet. He can’t risk all of that, risk ending up backing in that endless hell for… whatever the fuck this is. There’s no reason to do what his heart is insisting on. It’s stupid and doesn’t make any sense and it’s dumb.

But Prime, is it hard to ignore. 

In fact, Tommy finds himself reaching a hand towards the lid just moments later. He’ll just take a peek, that’s all. Maybe - maybe this voice in his head is actually his translator or something, and someone is trying to help him. Yeah, that totally makes sense.

He’ll just peek out, just for a second. Just to see. He’ll just…

Then he hears a loud blast, followed by screeching and something splintering. He jerks his hand back as several more blasts follow, cutting off a few screams as they go. In the commotion, a familiar, guttural bark rises into the air, speaking strangely but still unmistakable. Oh no… His captors are here.

“We’re looking for a runaway! ” Charmander announces in a bellowing voice.

Somehow, Tommy is relieved it’s not jellyfish bitch. He knows that if that prick were here, it’d be the one talking. So as long as Charmander is taking the lead, the jellyfish hasn’t shown up.  

“Little pink thing with gold on its head! It's dangerous, you don’t got to just worry about us, that thing will tear you apart! ”

Now, the boy wouldn’t say he’s proud of being talked about like that, but he won’t say he hates it, either. And technically, Charmander isn’t lying.

Some other aliens start talking, the discussion gets too quiet for Tommy’s translator, then he hears another blast and cry, and the sound of large objects being thrown around. Shit.  

If they’re searching there’s no chance they don’t find him in this crate. He has to get out of here, but where can he go? Those bastards will keep scouring this whole planet till they find him, dead or alive. They’ll probably hold ports like this hostage to prevent him leaving! They already seem to be doing so.

With all the stomping and shouting, there are clearly many more aliens than the wimpy trio that was pursuing him before. At the rate they seem to be tearing through the area, they’ll find the boy in no time! 

Tommy’s heart is trying to hammer out of his chest and his lungs are beginning to follow suit. It seems like no matter how desperately he tries to gulp in breath, there just isn’t enough air among the dust. 

And fuck - what if that’s just true? What if this planet’s atmosphere is too shit for him? Is he just going to pass out, suffocating to death before his captors even have the chance to find him again? What if it just weakens him so he can’t fight back? His limbs already feel like jelly, tingling with vicious pain and it suddenly seems much darker inside this crate.

Fuck fuck fuck– He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe!  

The pull in his chest is so strong it burns, like a rope pulling tighter and tighter around his heart until it’s about to burst. He has to move, he has to go! That someone is coming, he has to run to them! They’re coming to save him, just like he always hoped!

But he can’t move. His body is frozen aside from the reckless shudders of his heaving chest. He can’t hear anything but the piercing ring of his panic and the relentless cry of that pull. It’s so loud, so overwhelming, consuming– It takes everything in Tommy’s willpower to bite back a pitiful, desperate wail.

Then a slight scraping cuts through the noise, blinding light spilling down through a sudden crack in the darkness. The boy’s eyes fly wide as he feels his soul and body split apart. Because looming over him is the most terrifying alien his mind has ever seen, but his soul is absolutely rejoicing at the sight of them.

Long, sharp, deadly, dark claws, ashen skin, curls of smoke wisping around black horns, jagged, fanged, jack-o-lantern jaws, massive, dark, leathery wings, and glowing yellow eyes with dark pupils that transform from pinpricks to saucers the moment they fall on Tommy. 

Prey-danger-run-fear-death is the shriek of the boy’s primal mind - every instinct he’s learned or was born with in order to survive. The natural response built into his blood that recognizes when a threat is not to be messed with. The same instinct that warned him to turn and flee from the jellyfish bitch, knowing deep within his gut that any other course of action would be ill-advised.

But his heart - that eager, singing voice inside is still pulling him forward, urging Tommy closer to this creature. Protector-safe-close-home-love it cries with an endless spring of warmth and such incomprehensible certainty. This voice tries to assure him that this is the someone he’s been waiting for all this time, and the boy almost finds himself agreeing.

Then the creature lets out a low crooning noise that echoes through the crate and rumbles through Tommy, startling him from whatever strange trance he was in. Pulling back his lips with a snarl, the boy tenses into the furthest point from this terrifying alien.

He still can’t quite breathe, struggling to hold himself up even crouched as he is. The creature only stares, gaze flickering over Tommy with unmistakable curiosity that makes the boy’s skin crawl.

A familiar hiss breaks the moment, drawing the alien’s attention away and making Tommy’s stomach drop. Charmander. He can’t help tucking into himself, still frozen with indecision and overwhelmed by everything.

What should he do? What should he do? They’re here, they’ve found him - he has to go! Who says this creature won’t hand him over, or take Tommy for themselves? 

He has to run and hide, find some other way out. But his heart screams no at even the thought of leaving this shadow bitch behind. He shrinks even further into himself.

Charmander calls something and all of a sudden, the shadowy alien stands tall, wings outstretched wider than Tommy would have ever thought possible. Blatant rage is painted across their face, but it’s directed out - at Charmander, no doubt.

A series of low clicks and hisses sputter from their mouth, translating to cold words of warning. There’s a pause and Tommy’s heart jumps to his throat. Shadow bitch appears to be defending him, but will it matter? Can they possibly protect him from the large troupe that’s come after him? Yes! His heart insists eagerly.

Something is barked back from Charmander and shadow bitch is moving, sharp clicks rising into a pitched-up howl. The boy doesn’t need a translation to know that it’s a challenge, though some word shadow bitch doesn’t quite translate and spits out words like ‘crew ’ and ‘union ’.

He tenses as silence falls again for a moment, preparing to snap at anything that gets too close. Then he hears Charmander growl, a deep, ugly sound.

“You’re the mistake here, buddy, ” the translator provides, helpfully noting the presence of two languages - neither of which mean anything to Tommy.

The whistle and rattling impact of blasts tears the boy from pondering the words implanted into his brain, and he redundantly ducks even lower, covering his ears. The shadow bitch is gone when he opens his eyes, but before he blinks them again, Charmander is shrieking in pain and the ground is shaking with more impacts.

Fuck! It’s not playtime anymore, he has to get the fuck out of here! But with all these blasts flying around, how can he possibly hope to–

Vwoop! A rushing, low sound feels like it almost moves through him until suddenly Tommy is staring up at a void-black creature, almost double the height of shadow bitch and with jaws and claws to match. Its eyes are slitted and glowing with violet light, the same light that seems to fall from it like snow on drugs. 

Long, slender ears and straight, featureless horns seem to be the only things jutting off this creature that make it anything more than a sleep paralysis demon version of one of those noodle men at gas stations. It’s limbs are so creepily slender and long, it’s like a damn creepypasta reaching out for him– Oh fuck, it’s reaching for him!     

Prime, this one is going to taste so gross. His teeth feel sealed together as he tries to pry open his jaws. He tries to squirm, to growl, to whine - nothing.

Terror only seems to swallow him up further and further the longer he stares into those horrible violet eyes. He can’t move. It’s reaching and he can’t move!  

But if Tommy thought he was terrified now, he hadn’t even tasted true terror yet. He feels the hairs on his body rising before his mind even registers the sound, but when he hears it, there is no sliver of uncertainty as to what it means: Death.

The shriek splits him open, chills him to the bone. Those violet eyes and their hold over him shatter in an instant, swallowed up in their own unimaginable terror as death meets them face to face.

In that instant, Tommy’s heart knows that this death was not for him. He knows that his protector has saved him, as always he was meant to.

But in that same instant, he watches his protector be torn away. A shriek tears out of the boy’s out throat as he watches those bright flashes burn through his shadowy shelter. It’s a pain he can’t even comprehend, watching his protector fall - but it feels like half of him is falling and burning too.

A new voice screams with him, and Tommy feels the grief as his own. The voice cries out with terror, rage and this indescribable pain.

“Wilbur! ” They cry, and the boy knows they’re calling his protector.

There are more blasts, more shaking, more shouting. Charmander is ordering an advance, telling the others to 'grab the human’. Tommy doesn’t care. He scrambles to his feet, clutching the edge of the crate. He spots his protector, lying there with the dead one. Beyond them, approaching with alarming speed, is… is the voice.

She almost looks like a human woman, if any mortal could hold the stars within her. They dance in her eyes, her hair - and as she moves, the dust and wind seems to shape around her. With each rushing step, her form seems to shift and grow until, in a blink, she towers over the whole valley, and all the ships lined up beside her. 

Her very form seems to be made of stars and space now, like it’s cut out from an astronomy textbook and rendered and real.

The galaxies in her eyes flare red and her fist curls around what appears to be a pocket of darkness. Is that a blackhole? With a growl that seems to quake the planet’s foundations, she hurls the possible-blackhole down at the screaming, scrambling troupe of assholes.

Several screams cut short with shuddering impact. Tommy elects that she’s probably got this covered and climbs out of the crate, rushing towards the fallen form of Wilbur. Smoke still spills from the gaping holes in the alien’s chest and shoulder, but his eyes have not closed or faded to nothing. But they are fading.

The rope around his heart twists violently at the realization, tears springing from his eyes before he even reaches his protector.  The worst part is the way the dumbass is staring at him with big eyes and happy sounds, like it doesn’t matter that they’re fucking dying as long Tommy isn’t - which is bullshit!  

The boy drops to his knees and grips the alien’s stupid, torn, yellow shirt. He barely even knows what he’s doing - what good can he do for this bitch? If his alien is dying, there’s nothing Tommy can do to stop it. But he has to! He has to try - this bitch is not allowed to abandon him seconds after they finally meet, that’s just not fair!

“Don’t you fucking leave me!” he sputters, shaking the shadow bitch a little.

Something shifts in the alien’s expression, a weak whine squeezing out. Tommy nearly throws up at the pitiful sound, sobs tearing out of him with renewed violence. This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair, this isn’t fucking fair!  

“Look, I- I can understand you, okay?” He shoves closer over the trembling, dusty ground, tears spilling recklessly as he tries to assess shadow bitch’s injuries. “Just- Talk to me! Tell me how– tell me what to do! How to help! ”

When the alien shows no signs of comprehension, Tommy hisses frustration, whirling around to where the galaxy lady is fighting. Or rather - was fighting. She appears to have disposed of the threat, shrinking down as she runs over corpses and scorched earth. There are less bodies than there were enemies, but Tommy doesn’t know if that’s because they ran or because they didn’t leave remains.

“Wilbur!” she shrieks again, sliding to her knees beside Tommy and the crumpled alien as soon as her form reverts.

Her star-shimmering eyes don’t even look at the boy, far too fixated on shadow bitch, whose eyes are falling closed  – Tommy can’t help the cry that tears from him at the sight, feeling a knife twist harshly in his chest.

“No! No no, don’t–” he gasps but finds no air, only held together by the lady’s hands reaching out with an ethereal glow and hurried purpose.

“Stay with us, son,” she breathes - less of a prayer, and more of a command. “It’s not your time.”

Her glowing hands meet Wilbur’s wounds and the light flares, spilling colourful stardust like plumes of smoke. Tommy inches back, mesmerized by the dazzling colours but still digging his nails into his pant legs. He swallows dryly, watching closely as his protector’s face doesn’t so much as shift from that look of peaceful surrender. Each moment that passes fails to slow the racing of his heart.

“Will… ca-can you help?” the boy forces out between sobs, not wanting to distract the lady but unable to squash down his spiraling questions. “Is… is he…?”

“Don’t worry, little one,” she replies, her voice scraping an indescribable warmth inside him that causes his shoulders to sag. “His soul will not leave this plane as long as I have say.”

Relief crashes over his scrambled panic like a warm wave, unravelling tension so fast he nearly collapses into the dust. Her eyes flick to his at last, stars twinkling and swirling with softness and intrigue. Those stars seem to search him, far beyond what any being’s vision should ever reach. 

Tommy squirms under them, feeling suddenly vulnerable and exposed. Her lips draw up into a kind smile at the motion, as if to assure him she means no harm, before turning back to her son and gathering him into her glowing, ethereal arms.

A desperation grips the boy and he scrambles to his feet along with her, reaching a hand out as his mouth fails to do more than flap uselessly. If she’s leaving - if they’re leaving, Tommy’s going to lose his protector either way. He’s going to be torn away from him and he can’t let that happen.

“W- wait– ” 

Tommy’s mind and tongue stubbornly refuse to be helpful, leaving him helpless in his panic to do anything other than clutch the lady’s flowy dress as she steps away. He grips it with as his might, stumbling after her as she takes a few moments to register the resistance. 

When she does, she turns - Wilbur cradled close - and those stars glimmer with confusion. Huffing short breaths, Tommy forces his head to raise and his trembling lips to part. He tucks as close to her, to his protector, as he can before squeaking out a strangled: “ Please… ”

The starlit woman startles, galaxies blown wide and still swirling with a cloudiness that feels so foreign in eyes that must hold unfathomable knowledge.

“Little one, what’s wrong? We’re only going to the shuttle.”

Gripping tighter to her dress, Tommy ducks his head as the tears roll down. He’s never felt such desperation in his life, even each night that he’d stare up at the sky. His thoughts are jumbled and his words keep catching in his throat, but he has to speak. 

He can’t let this slip away from him, not now. He can’t go back to the longing, to the emptiness, to the never belonging. He can’t lose this that he’s barely even found.

“Please…” he croaks again, sniffling sharply. “Take me with you. ”

The alien mother instantly melts with sorrow and sympathy, making Tommy’s breath catch for a moment before she says: “Oh, little one, of course you’re coming with us!”

–

The first thing that presses into WIlbur’s consciousness is a steady, insistent pounding, lashing harsher and harsher behind his eyes with each passing moment. It slowly but surely tears him away from whatever slumbering peace he’d found himself in and forces him into discomfort. 

A disgruntled whine tries to slip free but finds itself strangled by something strange and foreign within the phantom’s throat. He stiffens, awareness meeting him like an icy wave. 

He is lying on his back, not uncomfortable but hardly within the same pleasant security of the way he normally wakes, curled up in his nest. His wings are laid out but still somewhat folded, a very unnatural position that he never would have consciously chosen. 

There is pressure against his wrist and ankle and a density to the atmosphere that instantly tells Wilbur that he’s in a recovery pod in their shuttle’s medbay. He pries his eyes open and confirms it, wincing despite the comfortable darkness he’s sheltered in. A holoscreen flickers to life beside him, blinking with readings of his vitals and informing him of the duration of his recovery.

The phantom squints at the bleary readings, sluggish thoughts dragging as they try to piece together how he ended up here. He makes out the words: ‘...temperature regulation normal, glandular restoration complete, wound closure complete, clavicle restoration in progress… ’ 

Flashes of searing pain tearing through his body as he sinks his claws into the throat of his enemy invade Wilbur’s mind and in an instant he is rising off his back, terror and agony exploding in his chest as he remembers.  

His treasure - his treasure was terrified, hiding, shrinking so small! A sharp, forceful spike of pain shoots through Wil’s upper chest and shoulder, his body demanding he abort the motion of sitting up. But he clamps his jaws shut, snapping apart the tube fastened there and fighting through his blurring, blackening vision. 

Where is his treasure!? He was protecting the tiny creature from those filthy poachers, but he was shot. He fell, his treasure crawled out for him and–

“Wilbur, be still!” His mother commands, concern, comfort and firmness all mingling in one echoing melody.

The cover of the pod disappears with a hiss, Kristin’s hands gently but non-negotiably easing the phantom back down. A fraction of Wilbur’s panic fades at her presence, remembering how she arrived on the battlefield as he faded away. 

But he can’t settle, because even scanning the black, silver-trimmed walls of the medbay, from the matching second pod, to the silver, cylindrical seats, to the open door looking out to the shuttle hall, he still does not spot his treasure.

“Mother,” he chirps in distress, not quite fighting her but not relenting either. “My– Where– My treasure, where is–”

“The little one is safe, son,” she soothes him, hands still warm and glowing with power as he brushes a hand down his cheek. 

The touch immediately eases the sharpness of pain that pulses through Wilbur’s shoulder but the phantom only stares dumbstruck at his mother’s knowing gaze.

“You– How–” he murmurs, confusion only growing at the way she softens.

“I can see the leylines of the universe, moonshine,” she says, pinkish, purple light swirling in her starry eyes as if to prove her point. “I see the one that connects you two.”

The words meet Wilbur with impossible force, untangling his emotions with a cataclysmic burst. The one that connects you two. His treasure, his golden little creature, his soulmate. We are soul bound and they are mine and now we won’t ever, ever be apart again.

“Where are they?” Wilbur demands, but it comes out as more of a plea. “I want to see my treasure!”

But his mother just continues petting his head, tousling the smoking plumes of soul fire until they tickle his skin and force his eyes to blink. “I know, moonshine… But he is sleeping and you need to rest.”

“He?” the phantom’s chest squeezes, barely fighting the urge to shift immaterial and take off to his treasure’s side.

Kristin hums affirmation. “His name is Tommy.”

Warmth swallows the phantom’s bursting emotions in a supernova. Tommy. Tommy, his little treasure, his soulmate. The name could not be more perfect. He lets out an adoring coo.

His mother gives him a strange look, not judgement or confusion, but something strained and sad within her joy. “...He is human. A child of Earth.”

Wilbur clicks acknowledgement, recalling his thoughts as he was fading. The sickening image created of how his treasure ended up where he is. A small human from a restricted galaxy, found with a chain collar and fleeing from powerful poachers. Tommy must be so confused and so terrified, torn away from everything he knows and forced into unsuitable environments where he was no doubt horribly mistreated.

A rattling hiss spits through Wilbur’s jaws as he thinks of it, claws tearing through the cushioning beneath him. His treasure felt so lost, all alone - he seemed so frightened and upset before. The phantom wants nothing more than to pull him into his safety, draping his wings over the human’s tiny, fragile form and crooning until he fears for nothing.

“Please– Can I see him, please? ” Wil begs, clutching his mother’s warm, glowing hand in both of his own.

The look she returns him is stern, even laced with sympathy. “When he wakes or when you heal, moonshine. No sooner.”

The pitchy sound that rips from the phantom is equal parts frustrated and distressed. He knows he’s acting like a phantling, but he can’t help it! He wants to see his treasure now! Every moment Tommy remains out of his sight feels like another moment closer to his final departure.

“Wilbur,” Kristin scolds, starry matter flicking out at her shoulders. “Do you want to disturb your little one’s rest? He’s been through a terrible ordeal.”

Shrinking into himself and dropping his gaze guiltily, he lets out a low, apologetical whistle. “No, of course not, I– I just… What if he’s scared? Or lonely? It hurts to be without him, what if he’s hurting? ”

The phantom’s chest is beginning to heave again, instincts running wild in his helpless state. His mother softens, laying a hand over his shuddering, aching chest and parting her lips to speak. But a different voice echoes through the room before hers.

“...Wilbur..?” The voice is soft and high, but full and heavy almost like Piglish, though carrying a strange accent that picks up the whistlings and chirpings of Abyssal and Elytish.

None of this catches the phantom’s interest like the sight of golden tangles and a single, round, blue eye peeking into the doorway. Euphoric, rejoicing warmth explodes in Wilbur’s chest at the presence of his treasure, hearing his voice calling his name.

The only thing keeping him in this pod at any short distance from the little one is his mother’s strong hold on his upper body. Pain still flares through his injuries and twists in his heart as he fights to get up and get to Tommy.

“Enough,” Kristin snaps under her breath before turning to the door and addressing Tommy. “Come here, little one. Your soulmate wants to meet you.”

A tiny, clawless hand appears and curls around the doorframe, the human’s face pinching in strangely. His lip draws back towards a snarl, like it did when Wilbur first greeted him in the crate. He growls something out, sounding suddenly far more like Piglish, but Wil’s translator still reads the words as English.

“Not little. ”

Wilbur can’t help the adoring coo that slips out - Shadows of the Abyss, he really is just like a furless shote! So aggressive and offended by any implication of helplessness. Techno will love him. 

Especially with the way the little one only seems to grow more irritated with the phantom’s cooing, stepping into the medbay with curled up hands raised and flat teeth bared. He makes a bunch of growling sounds that fail to translate, but somewhere in there he spits out: “I’ll bite you! Die! ”

Trilling with amusement, Wilbur clicks his doubt. “I don’t think your teeth are sharp enough to pierce me, shote,” he teases.

His treasure’s eyes narrow, glittering darkly with challenge. But before they go any further, Kristin lifts a hand off of Wilbur and holds it out towards Tommy.

“I’m sorry, Tommy, I didn’t mean to offend you. But you are a human child, are you not?”

Twisting his lips, Tommy jerks his head away, arms folding together over his chest. When he turns, Wilbur’s gaze immediately catches on a large, jagged scar behind his ear, cutting into the gold and touching the edge of his jawline. It’s a clear sign of a translator insertion done by amateurish hands - the wretched poachers, no doubt.

Wilbur shudders to think of why poachers would have any need for the prize they kept chained up to understand their speech. The countless, fading scars and marks covering the creature only darken this image. His gaze slides down to the sickening mark left on the skin of his treasure’s neck - a raw, reddened, mutilated imprint of the collar that he once wore.

The phantom’s claws twitch with the murderous flashes that consume his thoughts. He’s torn from them by the faithful translation of his implant.

“No, I’m a big man! ”

Another adoring coo forces its way out and Wilbur can practically feel his pupils blowing even wider - if they even can. He can’t help it - the way his treasure is standing is just like a phantling trying to puff out their wings to intimidate, and he’s glaring just like Techno used to when they were young!

“Oh?” Kristin questions, clearly amused herself. “I was so certain with how young your bond is, but I suppose I’ve never been the best at understanding finite lifespans. How long have you lived, exactly?”

Folding his arms again, Tommy lifts his chin with an air of haughtiness. “I’m eight! Maybe… maybe nine, now…”

Wilbur tilts his head, confused. “Eight? Eight what?”

His treasure lefts out a short huff, eyes flicking up to the ceiling. “ Eight years old, duh! Not a bay-bee!”

Two words don’t quite translate, the first one offering no suggestion while the second has Wil’s implant spitting out the definition: ‘human infant ’. Concern floods the phantom that the little one would even feel the need to make that distinction. Just how long are Earthen years?

He glances to his mother, hoping she might have some idea, but she appears equally confused and concerned. Tommy seems satisfied with his answer, but Wil is far from it.

“How many… years… do humans normally live?” he asks, almost dreading the answer.

His treasure looks away, lidded eyes mirroring the way Techno’s are the… majority of the time. “I duh-no (don’t know? ), like eighty, ninety years? ”

Sharp claws dig inside the phantom’s chest as he feels himself flicker momentarily immaterial. Shadows of the Abyss, that’s a lot more than eight. But hey - perhaps humans are like Elytrians, quickly reaching adulthood and aging gracefully for galactic millennia! Who’s to say how long it takes for Earth to reach a year’s worth of cycles?

There’s no way Wilbur believes that Tommy is fully matured, but he hopes by the Abyss that his treasure is at the very least close. His hopes are swiftly dashed by his mother’s next question.

“And at how many years are humans considered adult?”

The little one seems to think for a few moments, face squishing together in a funny way. “Well, it depends… Legally, by-oh- by-oh-lah- by-lodge-ick-lee, science, whatever, or mature in your mind and stuff. ” 

A beat passes, Wilbur and Kristin both staring blankly at the little human. Tommy seems to notice their cluelessness and his chest puffs up.

“Well, whatever, ” he waves a tiny hand. “We’re adult at eighteen, but our brain’s not done til later, like twenty…five? I think. ”

Another beat as Wilbur’s brain struggles to process the numbers, slowly, agonizingly putting the calculations together. As soon as it clicks, a sharp, distressed wail is tearing from his jaws, almost in time to his mother’s echoing gasp.

“Oh, little one! ” Kristin whimpers, immediately gathering Tommy into her arms despite his shock and protests.

“Deepest Shades of the Abyss, he’s a nestling! ” Wilbur cries, struggling against the wretched pain shooting through his upper body that tries to keep him from his precious, little treasure.

Thankfully, his mother has mercy and brings Tommy close, allowing the phantom to hold his treasure’s small, squishy, fragile face in his hands. His long, dark claws practically swallow the human’s whole head, sinking into impossibly soft, golden curls of what seems to be thin, cord-like fur - too soft to be whiskers, but too fine to be feathers like the gold that adorns his father’s head. 

He can stop the soothing croons and warbles that continuously slip out and he strokes the nestling’s surprisingly soft, furless hide. A war appears to be waging within Tommy’s eyes, crackling like those colourful, violent storms that would overtake the skies back on Wilbur’s home planet. His treasure seems equally determined to wriggle away from Wil’s grasp as he is obviously drawn to relax into the contact and lean even closer. 

But finally, the stubborn side wins out and those tiny, clawless hands swat Wilbur’s away. After a rapid series of high-pitched yelps and whines, the translator spits out: “Get off! Let me go! Put me down! ”

With a reluctant whimper, the phantom pulls his hands back a little, whimpering again when Kristin also obeys, setting his treasure on the floor. He’s too far away! This nestling is too reckless and too fragile to be trusted on his own, and Wilbur can’t get up and move as fast as he normally can! How is he supposed to keep Tommy safe?

“Stop fuh-king l ooking at me like that! I told you I’m not a bay-bee! I’m not– whatever the fuck you called me! ” The nestling growls out.

Cocking his head to the side, Wilbur clicks something between confusion and scolding. Scolding because his treasure is obviously lying, and confusion because the translator keeps having trouble with one of the sounds that Tommy seems fond of making.

“You may think you’re not, treasure, but at your age phantlings are not allowed to leave the nest! ” the phantom snaps back, feeling his whistling getting more and more off key as panic squeezes his chest. “Stars, do you even know how to defend yourself? You haven’t even grown in any defensive traits! You should be under the protection of your caretakers!”

The human abruptly throws his head back, a strange, sharp sound spilling out as his lips curl back, stretching in an odd way they haven’t before. Wilbur and Kristin flinch at the sudden exclamation, but before they can question it, Tommy is speaking.

“Do you have any idea why those bah-stars had me? Do you think they were keeping me as some helpless little p-eh-t ?”

Trilling confusion, Wilbur glances to his mother before looking back at his treasure. He’s still got his lips pulled back in that strange way, baring his teeth but not in the same way he had before. It’s off-putting, especially with the low tension that’s now winding into the growling sounds he’s making.

“Do you want to know how I escaped? ” 

With a soft coo, the phantom tries to settle down the building unease inside him. “How did you get away from the poachers, Tommy?”

A hand reaches up and strokes the angry, red mark left behind by the collar. Something dangerous floods his treasure’s brilliant, blue gaze as he growls again. 

“I smashed the chain with a rock and ran. And I bit off any limb that tried to grab me. ”

–

Tommy has no idea how to feel right now. There’s just way too much shit spinning around his head and it’s a little fucking hard to sort any of that out when any second he spends alone squeezes a fist of panic tighter around his heart. 

Any moment that his shadowy, bitch-ass alien is out of his eyeline, Tommy’s brain starts screaming at him like his body is convinced he’s going to crumble to dust if he steps any further away. It’s bullshit.

The scary space lady tried to explain that there’s some kind of connection between him and ‘Wilbur’ and he just has to let himself ‘adjust’ or whatever. None of it makes sense and Tommy just wants all of it to go away already. So what if being close to the shadowy bitch is literally the best feeling he’s ever known? So what if some aching part of him feels whole at last - like he finally, finally found where he belongs?

It’s weird and dumb and scary and Tommy doesn’t want it! He’s a big man and he’s survived just fine on his own all his life! He doesn’t need a big, dorky batman or motherly space lady looking after him, coddling him like he’s some helpless baby! He doesn’t need them!

It doesn’t matter what the dumb voice in his heart demands - he’s going to stay on this cozy bed in this big, dark room until these confusing, frustrating feelings all go away. 

The space lady said it would take time, right? That this ‘pull’ he feels will get less intense? He just hopes it happens soon, because pretty soon he’s going to start breaking things. 

With a frustrated grumble, Tommy tucks tighter into his sheets. He’d had to explain to the space lady why he was shivering and she’d totally freaked out, cranking up the temperature and grabbing him some shiny, leathery material that has been serving as a blanket. It’s not the best, but it’ll have to do. Leagues better than his previous accommodations, of course.

Apparently these aliens don’t need heat to live, and Wilbur actually prefers it cold. But the space lady assured Tommy that her son would happily swelter in the heat to make sure he’s comfortable. 

And Tommy’s heart was not warmed by that at all - that was just his body heating up, obviously.

The boy’s thoughts trail to before, the way the shadow was looking at him when his cold claws cupped Tommy’s face. His claws looked so deadly sharp, but they were so impossibly gentle on his skin, brushing his cheeks like he was fragile - precious.

He shivers, tucking his knees to his chin. He blames the cold, despite the room being almost uncomfortably warm now.

Has anyone ever looked at him that way? Has anyone even come close? That tug in Tommy’s heart twists with something bittersweet, overjoyed at the memory but agonized to be away from the source. 

No one ever could. That voice insists, but not unkindly. Whatever this is inside him is unbelievably thrilled at the idea. No one else was ever meant to.

Mercifully, Tommy is torn from his thoughts by a soft ping noise and a small, blue light flickering to life at the door. A low, melodic hum drifts through the metallic barrier, automatically easing tension in the boy’s shoulders. He knows the voice instantly - this one never seems to need translation despite it surely not being English. He just… understands, somehow.

“Hey, Tommy? It’s Kristin. Can I come in?”

The boy almost says no, determined to dig in his heels and wallow. But sitting here alone with his thoughts spinning around so fast is quickly driving him crazy. Plus, space lady - Kristin - has been nothing but kind and he doesn’t want to be rude to her.

“Sure,” he mutters, not knowing if his voice will even be loud enough to breach the barrier between them.

But it seems to do the job, because the light flickers green and the door slides open with a soft hiss. The familiar sound causes Tommy to flinch involuntarily - certain for a single moment that he will raise his head to see jellyfish bitch staring eerily down at him, dragging in a new victim for him to slaughter.

Beautiful starry eyes meet his instead, gazing at him with warmth and what might be gentle concern. A tight breath rattles the boy’s ribs, relief flooding as abruptly as the panic. Because of course it’s not his former captors - he’s free now. He escaped. He’s safe.

“Are you alright, little one?” Kristin crosses the room, sleeves and skirt drifting around her like she carries her own windstorm.

He’s so distracted by the motion and his own frazzled mind that he doesn’t correct the nickname. “I’m- I’m fine… Just… jumpy, I guess.”

She softens, humming sympathetically and sitting down on the bed. “I understand. Rest assured, you have nothing to fear anymore.”

“I want to go home,” Tommy blurts, shocking himself.

What does he even mean? He knows his words are true - they ache deep in his soul and threaten to crumble him to dust, much like the screaming urge to run to Wilbur. Truly, it’s what he’s always wanted. Home.

But what is home to him? Earth? England? His latest foster home? All those answers feel hollow. They never filled the hole inside when he was there. 

Sure, he misses Earth. He’s sick of poking and prodding aliens, of everything being scary, unfamiliar, uncomfortable. He would die to hear a proper laugh - even a smile. Kristin comes close, but she has no teeth, and her eyes - though awesome and pretty - don’t squint or scrunch up the same way a human’s would.

He misses the flowers, the trees, the animals - Prime, he misses Henry so much. He never went anyway without the battered, stuffed cow. He was carrying Henry when the aliens took him, but he must have dropped her when he passed out. He’d do anything to get her back. 

Even to get something - anything even close to a stuffed animal. It doesn’t have to look like anything from earth, it just need to be soft and fucking huggable.

But does he really want to go back?  

“Oh, I know, starlight,” Kristin says, pulling Tommy back to the present.

She lays a startlingly warm hand over one of his clenched fists, staring at him with one of those almost-human smiles. “We’ll be home soon, don’t worry.”

He blinks. He blinks again. Something incredible is blossoming in his chest, dancing and twirling in delight at the echo of her words. We’ll be home. Nothing has ever sounded so right. It’s the only thing and everything he’s ever wanted and needed to hear.

Still, stubbornness clings to him in the churning of his stomach and he forces his brow to furrow. 

“I… I’m from Earth.”

Countless stars twinkle in her gaze. “You are.”

She says it like it’s nothing. Like she can’t see how blatantly adverse his declaration is to hers. Like she doesn’t understand the gravity behind it that is pulling them apart.

Tommy’s jaw clenches. He swallows rough and raw. Tears burn beneath his eyes as he forces himself to stare her down. He needs to make her see, make her understand. He has to fight the crying of his heart that begs him to just let it lie. The voice that tells him just to accept this - because he can’t.

He’s a human. He doesn’t belong here - he doesn’t belong anywhere else but Earth, no matter what his soul is and has always tried to tell him. He’s not built for this. It’s not built for him. He can’t get attached to whatever this is that he’s found, because it’ll only be a matter of time before it’s all torn away again. Eventually he’ll have to go back to where he belongs. 

He’ll be too much trouble, or he’ll be dying, or he’ll get hunted - whatever it’ll end up being, somehow these aliens will decide that sending him back is what’s ‘best for him’. They always do. 

Every time, it’s plastered smiles and tight grips on his shoulders - politely explaining that their home is just ‘not a good fit’ for Tommy. He just needs a ‘different environment’, or a family with more ‘free time’, or a guardian who’s ‘better equipped’ to handle him. They all just wanted what was best for the boy - it was nothing personal.

And yeah, maybe they were all lying. Maybe he was just more trouble than he was worth. But the result was the same, and there’s no chance it’ll be any different all the way out in the middle of fucking space.

But Kristin is staring at him like she hasn’t considered any of this - like she can’t understand why Tommy would even bring up his planet of origin. He swallows stinging, clenching his jaw.

“I’m- I want– …Take me back there,” he finally forces out, words tasting like ash.

Blueish light sparkles and swirls through Kristin’s eyes and hair with a deep, startled noise. Her glowing hair is floating above her shoulders now as she looks at Tommy like he’s… Well, he can’t really tell what she’s thinking, but it’s nothing good. 

He stiffens, taking an involuntary step back. His heart pounds, jaw aching in anticipation of biting down on any outstretched limb. But Kristin doesn’t reach out - instead, her arms drop to her sides as purples and greens ripple through the swirling light.

“Do… do you need something from your planet, little one?”

The boy blinks. Of all the questions he was expecting, that was not one he’d considered. Especially not asked with such sincerity and confusion. His brain lags for a few seconds, failing to come up with any suitable response. Instead, he just stares dumbly, mouth flapping open and closed.

“...Yes?” he squeaks at last, speaking it more as a horribly unconfident question than an answer.

Pink overtakes the pulsing colours dancing over Kristin and she steps closer, hands hovering like a doting mother over her injured child. “What is it that you need? Are you lacking nourishment? Is it the air? Is there a companion you require to-”

A rush of concerned questions meet Tommy like a dizzying blow, knocking the wind from his lungs and spinning the thoughts around his head. He shocks himself by not flinching away from her warm, glowing touch, but his mouth still sputters a protest before his brain has even caught up.

“N-no, I’m fine, I’m not– I’m not fucking dying!”

“Are you uncomfortable? Please, tell me what you need, we can–”

“I don’t fucking need anything!” he shouts, finally pulling away from the lady’s hold despite the overwhelming comfort it’s bringing him.

Kristin withdraws her hands but absolutely none of her concern. A frayed huff spills from Tommy’s lips as he clutches his cheeks with both hands. All of his thoughts are fraying, he can’t think straight! Fuck, he just wants to run to Wilbur– 

“Oh, starlight– ” Kristin breathes, so soft and motherly that the boy feels tears sting in his eyes. “What is wrong? Please, tell me.”

He shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes in frustration. It only succeeds in causing more tears to spill down, sobs starting to shake out of him. Kristin drops to her knees in an instant, burning bright pink and letting out a distressed, sonic sound. 

The pulse of it ripples through Tommy’s chest and forces him to draw a sharp, deep breath that tastes starkly fresh and delicious. The shaking he hadn’t even noticed rattling his body is halted immediately, replaced by a warm exhaustion. 

But the crying only seems to get worse, and this does not escape Kristin’s notice. 

“What is happening? You reacted this way when Wilbur was hurt,” she questions, more distressed pulses accompanying her speech.

“I-It’s fine, I’m j-just– crying,” Tommy hiccups, swallowing down his embarrassment for the sake of calming the space lady down. “H-happens… when hu-mans f-feel… too much.”

Unfortunately, this information does not seem to help Kristin get any calmer. “Feel too much? Are you overwhelmed by sensation or emotion?”

A bit of both, Tommy thinks, but decides against speaking. “Emotion,” he squeaks instead.

Another pulse, more swirling pink. “What helps you regulate?”

The boy is lucky to understand her meaning thanks to years of required therapy and anger management lessons. The adults always used those dumb fancy words to sound nice when really what they were saying was ‘learn these tricks to control your damn tantrums and stop being such a problem’. He always hated the stupid smile his anger management therapist would wear when she asked him those ‘reflection questions’.

“Now, when we’re in these situations, how are we supposed to regulate, Tommy?” She’d ask.  

And if he had a translator in his brain back then, he’s sure it would have told him that what she meant was: “You know that when your foster brother picks on you, you’re supposed to walk away and take deep breaths, not punch him in his dumbass mouth like he deserves. 

Because you’re the only one that gets punished for being bad, Tommy. So you have to be better if you want anyone to keep you.”

He opens his mouth to respond, but before he can get any words out, the door is sliding open with another hiss that makes him jolt. Tommy whips his head to find himself staring into the heavily dilated pupils of Wilbur - the bitch who should definitely be confined to his little hospital pod thing, and not standing on his damn feet!

He’s leaning heavy on the doorframe, slouched over like he can’t control one half of his body, but his sole focus is on Tommy.

“Wilbur!” Kristin snaps scoldingly, but her concern is clear.

The shadow bitch ignores her, whimpering and cooing at Tommy as he stumbles and reaches towards him. 

Now, Tommy should absolutely be with Kristin here. He should be pissed at Wilbur, pulling back and ordering the dumbass back into bed. Prime, he looks one step from passing out! Besides, the boy is feeling fragile and conflicted enough right now, the last thing he needs is to get any closer to the source of all these red-hot, confusing, terrifying emotions.

However, upon seeing Wilbur, Tommy finds any trace of logic completely dissipated. In a blink, he’s cradled in his protector’s arms, sheltered by his wings and clinging tightly to his neck. Sobs rip out freely, muffled by the alien’s shoulder. 

With every warbling noise, the boy squeezes tighter. Every time Wilbur’s claws brush through his hair, he sobs harder. He prays over and over for his protector to never stop.

After an unclear amount of time, Tommy starts to pick up phrases being spoken over him.

“--know what started it–”

“ --set him off– ”

“--just too much– –take him–”

“ --unfamiliar– –to feel safe– ”

They’re obviously discussing him, fretting over stupid tears like startled hens. Tommy could not be more mortified about it, but he can’t get himself to stop crying. And he can’t deny how much having his protector’s arms around him is helping - like a tether in a whirlwind, single-handedly keeping him attached to his body in all this floaty, confusing mess.

A soft whistle in his ear becomes Wilbur’s prompting voice: “ Treasure? Could you tell us how to help you? ” 

Tommy sighs, forcing himself to pull his face from the alien’s chest - despite the way his heart seems to tear in half at the slight motion. He wipes his face with a grumpy fist and scrunches his nose, registering an odd stench in the air, almost like burning pine and citrus.

“I’m fine. I’m just being stupid,” he insists, sniffing for the source of the scent. 

The alien makes a wounded noise, grasping Tommy’s shoulders and trying to meet his gaze. “No, no, don’t say such things! You were distressed, I felt it so strongly! I don’t blame you, you’re so far from everything familiar to you and this all must be so overwhelming! ”

The boy swallows hard, not wanting to admit how the words ring true. He cringes as his eyes land on a wet patch on his protector’s shoulder left by his tears. Then he instantly freezes, gaze focusing and realization sinking deep into his gut - the dark patch is not marking clothing but skin, and faintly he can see wisps of pale smoke rising from the mark. Wisps that smell like burning pine and citrus.

“Shit! Wilbur, I– Did I fucking burn you!?” he yelps, simultaneously flinching back and reaching forward to check the wound.

His protector startles, letting out a confused warble and glancing down at the steaming mark. He seems to realize the fact only now, poking at it with a curious claw like it’s something interesting rather than a fucking injury.

“Oh, that’s what that was, ” he says far too casually. “You appear to leak something hydrogen-based liquid when distressed. ”

“Wh–” Tommy can hardly summon words, desperately looking to Kristin for aid. “Why did you let me– Why didn’t you tell me water burns you!? Does that hurt?!”

“A little, but it’ll fade before long. ”

The boy can do nothing but stare helplessly, eyes damn near popping out of his skull as the alien’s mother - mercifully - steps over to inspect the wound herself. With a touch and a quick flash of bright pink, the mark vanishes completely. Tommy sags in relief, head spinning with aftershocks as his protector lets out a strange chittering sound.

“Or that. ”

This is all just… too much to process. Tommy shakes his head, pressing his hands over his eyes. One thing he’s grateful for is how much this spacecraft is built for the dark. He doesn’t think he could stand to be in one of those blindingly white, sterile ships from sci-fi movies, it would be like a constant jackhammer behind his eyes.

“Tommy, starlight, please,” Kristin’s soft, sing-song voice floods his ears again. “Tell us what we can do to make you more comfortable. Something that would help you feel at home.”

He looks up with an aching breath, meeting only pure earnestness in their alien gazes. Immediately turning away from all of that, the boy wracks his brain for anything simple that could put them at ease. That could put them all at ease. What does he want from Earth? What does he miss from home?

The image of Henry fills his mind instantly and his nails dig into the thin, leathery blanket they’ve provided him. It wouldn’t be too difficult to ask them for something like that, would it? Surely some other planets have soft things.

“Um… So, humans are really… I don’t know the word, but they like–” he sputters a sigh, hating every moment of this. “They need a lot of touch and like, comfort and stuff, and they like soft and warm things to like… hold… and cuddle with.”

He shifts the pitiful blanket tighter around him, hoping to convey an example. He can’t really tell if it’s working because he refuses to look in their eyes. His face is red-hot and his throat has gone totally dry, this is the worst. Why do these aliens have to be so obsessed with caring for him?

“When you say ‘things’, what do you mean? ” 

“So, we usually have thicker and softer blankets than this–” He shrugs up the ‘blanket’ again. “And, well… I had this… we call them stuffed animals, which are just fake versions of the creatures on earth made out of soft materials. I had a cow named Henry. I took her everywhere, but I lost her when I was taken.”

Something between a croon and a hiss slips from Wilbur as his claws twitch, but the apparent anger is quickly overtaken by that now-familiar look - the one with the massive pupils and undeniable concern.

“You must be so uncomfortable! ” the alien all but whines, turning to his mother in distress.

The translator starts to spit out garbled nonsense as Wil speaks next, presumably throwing out names and local terms that mean nothing to Tommy. It starts to form a headache above his brow, and he drops against Wilbur’s chest, trying to plug his ears and block out the source of the internal voice’s struggles.

It does the trick, but also catches the aliens’ attention and concern again. They both try to speak, but only Kristin’s voice reaches him, with the way he always just seems to hear her words.

“I’m so sorry, Tommy. We’ll stop at a market in thirty and you can pick out whatever comfort items you prefer, but for now, how about you try to get some rest?”

With a grouchy noise, Tommy agrees. Wilbur coos at him, chin brushing his ear.

“Do humans prefer resting in company or solitude? ”

“Company,” Tommy replies immediately, not allowing his embarrassment or convoluted feelings to make him hesitate. “At least… until I have the… comfort. Humans need comfort.”

He knows he’s just digging himself deeper and deeper into this tantalizing warm pit, but he’s still feeling really fragile and the peace Wilbur’s presence is bringing him is enough to make him forget his earlier reservations for now.

Wilbur trills curiously. “How can I give you comfort, treasure? ”

Heat rushes to Tommy’s cheeks. He was still too overwhelmed to really notice it before, but this alien is still calling him ‘treasure’. It feels absolutely wonderful in the most horrible, gut-wrenching, terrifying way. At least they’re not calling him ‘little one’ anymore.

The boy takes a deep breath, letting it out with a shudder. “You- I– …You were doing it before, it’s just…”

With his face pointedly shoved against the alien’s chest, Tommy shakily wraps his arms around, fingers coming to a stop as they bump against presumably the joint of Wil’s wings. The alien trills again, shifting until his claws are gently sinking into Tommy’s hair, the other limb embracing the boy securely. Tommy sighs, already satisfied the moment before the low light is suddenly swallowed by shockingly soft, leathery wings fold over him. 

Prime, it feels heavenly. Wilbur’s embrace is perfect, like the alien instinctively knew exactly how Tommy needed to be held. Like he was made for that purpose.

“Like this? ” his protector coos - somehow hesitant, unsure.

“Yes,” Tommy breaths, feeling his consciousness slipping away from the sheer sense of safety that is crashing over his frayed, adrenaline-pumped nervous system. 

“Just like that.”

–

“You’re lucky I have the energy for this, Wil,” Kristin scolds, reddish pink stardust flaring up and passing through her eyes.

Heat pulses from her glowing hands, transferring rapid healing to the phantom’s shoulder, and hopefully warming his sleeping treasure in the meantime. From the way Tommy unconsciously leans his golden head towards the glow, Wil guesses he’s correct.

With a light-hearted click, Wilbur sends his mother a teasing look. “But mother, do you not hold the power of galactic calamity? I thought you never run out of energy–”

The pink glow flares bright red and heat stings all the way through the phantom’s chest and down his arm and he barely holds back a chittering shriek. He only clicks rapidly instead, as to not wake the nestling. His mother’s glare is equally red but of course it holds no true malice.

“I was joking– ” Wil tries weakly, but her matter flares contemptuously.

“This is not a matter for jokes, son. I told you not to leave the pod.” 

“He was distressed! The bond was screaming for–” he argues instantly, fierce protectiveness urging him to take up a losing battle.

“Enough,” Kristin snaps, voice echoing with an almost metallic aftertaste.

Oh. Wilbur takes a closer look at his mother, guilt and dread sinking deep into his flesh. Her violet skin is turning a grayish mauve, and countless stars are blinking out to darkness in her flowing matter. Her gaze is dimming and her voice is beginning to grate with strain. She is exhausted.

How much energy did she expend fighting off those poachers? How much more on keeping him alive? And now he’s forcing his mother to use even more to heal him just because he couldn’t follow instructions and allow the pod to complete his restoration?

And what if they run into trouble, or have to defend Tommy when they go out to pick out his comfort items? His mother could send herself into Stasis over this, and it would be all Wilbur’s fault! But here he is, having the audacity to poke fun at her while she exhausts herself over him.

“Mother…” he rasps, speech dying in his throat. “I… I’m–”

One last pulse of heat jolts through him, shoulder sharply clicking back together with a burning pain that steals his words away. The pink and red glow vanishes in an instant as Kristin pulls her hands back and lets her clothes and matter fall limp. 

It’s a rare and queasy sight, seeing his mother so motionless and drooped. In any normal circumstance, seeing her like this would mean something is severely wrong. There are days where she loses her light, letting gravity pull her down as she wallows in the grief of everything she’s lost and has yet to lose. 

Sometimes her body forces itself into Stasis during these times, convinced that she’s injured. The assumption is not entirely wrong, either. 

It’s a devastating thing to watch, and Phil usually hides away with her for a while until she feels okay to be seen by her children. She doesn’t like to be worried over, insisting that her ancient woes can not be comprehended, let alone sympathized with, by mortal souls. Especially not by her children - souls so terribly young even by Phil’s standards.

But now her light is dimmed and she stands under the weight of gravity and it was no ancient woe that brought her here - only her own child.

“I’m so sorry, I should have listened, I never–”

“Moonshine,” Kristin cuts in, much more gently as her clothes and matter slowly begin to lift and flow once more. “Your guilt is never my desire. I’d just prefer if you weren’t so reckless,” she assures him with a soft smile.

Lowering his head, Wilbur tucks tighter around his treasure. Kristin catches the movement and smiles wider, a touch of pink flaring back to life in her eyes.

“...But yes, I understand your motives,” she concedes, staring as if the phantom were immaterial and she could see Tommy through his wings.

Perhaps she can, since celestials can see all existing soul bonds as well as being able to form them with other beings. Maybe that’s the reason for the swirling pink in her adoring gaze.

“Phil would protest if I tried to claim I wouldn’t do anything for our family. A bond is a powerful thing - it makes you capable of so much more than you ever thought possible.”

Wilbur clicks agreement, trailing his claws rhythmically through his treasure’s perfect, golden coils. Techno is going to be so jealous. He can’t wait to show the fledgling off - the only thing holding him back from immediately bragging over the holo is his treasure’s comfort. The poor thing is overwhelmed enough already.

They must be nearing Ramnus by now, thankfully. Wilbur can’t stand his treasure lacking any comfort. They had to take a short detour to find a fitting planet for their purposes, but Ramnus will certainly provide. Having felt Puffy’s wool for himself, the phantom is sure her home planet’s market will have no shortage of options for the human in terms of warmth and softness. 

Rammites shed piles of their wool every cycle and so it’s deeply ingrained in their culture to make use of it for resources and profit. Wilbur looked into the appearance of earthen creatures, hoping to find any information on the ‘cow’ and managed to find a basic report. The beasts are awfully similar to some of the native creatures of Ramnus, so they might just be in luck!

He doesn’t know if rammites make practice of recreating small, soft versions of their beasts, but he’s sure he could request it easily enough. Credits are no concern, after all.

“I think we’re here,” Kristin’s voice tears him from his thoughts, glancing up at the flashing blue light above. “I’ll bring us to the surface, you get the little one ready.”

With a click, Wilbur slowly unfurls his wings, fully revealing his precious, slumbering treasure. His furless, pinkish face is squished up against the phantom’s torso, steadily tickling it with soft, warm breaths. His treasure’s clawless hands hang limply over the sides - so content, so trusting. So, so unfathomably adorable and tiny!

His wings twitch, instincts eagerly attempting to pull the phantom under so that he shelters the fledgling and holds him close forever, defending him with his very life. But he fights it off - the human needs his comfort items. 

No matter how impossibly comfortable he looks now, that fact still remains. Taking that chance away would not be fair. He’d not be being a good soulmate.

As if to emphasize the point, Tommy shifts, face scrunching in a way that is definitely displeased as a grumpy huff crawls from his throat. Wilbur coos, brushing the shimmering gold from his eyes as they crack open. 

Shadows of the Abyss, Techno will love this tiny shote so much. Wilbur can’t wait to never let his brother near him.

“Hi, treasure,” Wilbur greets the dazzling blue.

His treasure blinks, pinkish cheeks suddenly turning much pinker - almost red. The phantom trills curiously, cautiously trailing the back of a claw over the new colour. It’s much warmer than the human is normally, and now his treasure is jerking back, trying to hide his face. Wilbur’s trill turns concerned.

“Is something wrong? You changed colour.”

“No! ” Tommy replies awfully quickly, still hiding. “ It’s nothing, don’t worry about it!”

The phantom clicks, something between disbelieving, teasing and scolding. He tilts his head, playfully prying at the limbs twisting around his treasure’s face.

“Why are you hiding?” he coos, chittering when a clawless hand swats his away.

“I’m not! ”

Another click and a low whistle. “Sure seems like you are.”

“Am not! You’re just ugly and I don’t wanna look at your dumb face! ” his treasure shouts, rapidly swatting Wilbur’s prodding hands away.

Jaw dropping open, Wilbur lets out a choked-off squawk of something between shock, amusement and offense. Oh no, he absolutely cannot let Techno within thirty clicks of his treasure - they’ll team up and destroy Wil at hyperspeed!

The shuttle lurches suddenly, indicating that Kristin must have received permission to land. It’s nothing unusual, but the fledgling reacts like the craft is about to explode and scatter them into space. He flinches, pressing stiffly against Wilbur with a breathless whine, eyes round and terrified.

The phantom wraps tightly around his treasure without hesitation, relief flooding him as he watches the tension slowly melt away from the human’s shoulders. In fact, Tommy pulls back abruptly, face changing colour again as he looks away from Wilbur.

“What is– Are we landing somewhere or something? ” he grumbles out, apparently choosing to ignore his fearful reaction.

Indulging him, Wilbur clicks affirmation. “Yes. We’ve found somewhere that should have the items you’re looking for! Kristin is just landing and then we’ll bring you out to pick out whatever you want from the market!”

Those blue eyes go so round and bright that Wilbur almost thinks his treasure has stars in his own gaze. But even so, he is still and silent - hesitant.

“Really..? But… how do I pay you back? ” Tommy’s voice is so soft and unsure, it feels like a phaser tearing the phantom apart.

A wounded croon slips out before Wilbur can stop it. The fledgling can’t really think they’re worried over credits, can he? How could he think he’ll be indebted to them when they would give over absolutely anything to make him happy?

“Don’t worry about that, treasure, we have no shortage of resources! I told you, anything you want, we will get for you!” he vows again, pushing back the shimmering gold and delighting when his treasure leans into the touch.

The fledgling still seems disbelieving, but he doesn’t argue. With a hiss and flashes of blue, the shuttle shakes again, settling into a landing. His treasure grips tight again, but quickly recovers and looks around curiously, even pulling out of Wilbur’s embrace to stand up.

The phantom leaps to his feet as well, wings folding back once he has his balance. He clicks eagerly as he walks ahead towards the exit hatch, impatient to show his treasure the beauties of a whole new planet.

“Where are we? ” Tommy squeaks, trailing hesitantly.

“Planet Ramnus! They’re a neutral planet and they have beasts here similar to your ‘cows’! Their markets mainly consist of crafts made from their wool, so I’m sure we can find soft things for you here,” he explains excitedly, practically bouncing and flapping as he guides the fledgling.

There are stars in those blue eyes again. But he slows to a stop, hands tugging at each other.

“Do you know if it’s safe for me out there? ”

Wilbur squawks, mentally swatting himself for forgetting something so crucial in his eagerness. Hurriedly swiping a claw over his wristband, he brings up the holo and checks the readings comparing to the shuttle’s readings on Tommy. 

The oxygen levels are sustainable, no harmful toxin levels, but the environment is colder than the human is comfortable in. Well, they’ll have to use a ray shield to help with that, since it happens to be the exact problem they're attempting to solve. 

Still, there’s too little they know about how humans react to sudden changes in atmosphere. it’s just too many factors to analyze - better to play it safe.

“Wait here!” Wilbur instructs, rushing towards their surface gear compartment.

With a wave of his wristband, the compartment opens and the hooks shoot forward with a hiss, displaying their array of protective equipment. Ray shields, heavy-duty insulators, hoverpads, back-up access bands, and the items he’s looking for: oxy-masks. 

Luckily the shape of the masks are ambiguous enough to cover both air passageways on his human’s head, or this might have been more of an issue. He snatches one up - knowing he and his mother have no problems with Ramnus’ atmosphere - and hurries back over to his treasure.

He holds the mask out excitedly towards the human, wondering if he’s ever used one before. He wasn’t wearing one during his escape even though that planet was hardly a healthy or sustainable atmosphere for humans and it couldn’t have been comfortable. Tommy will be so relieved that he won’t have to experience that this time!

At least, that’s the reaction the phantom was expecting. Truly, the last thing he would have expected is for his treasure to go rigid, panic glazing his round eyes as they lock onto the mask in Wilbur’s claws.

All at once, his treasure is as small and utterly terrified as the first moment they met. He lets out a shrill, broken shriek - a horrible, guttural sound that Wilbur has never heard come out of the human before. 

It sets every one of the phantom’s instincts ablaze, vision blurring and body moving without thought. He tries to reach his treasure, tries to pull him close and shelter him with his wings. But instead of rushing to his protection, the fledgling runs away from Wilbur!

His instincts fray and spark, a whistling cry forcing out as he chases after his frightened treasure. And his treasure is fast - but Wilbur is faster. 

There are choice few species that could ever hope to escape a phantom when one is determined to follow. Wilbur flies through immaterial space, passing through the panicking, stumbling form of his treasure and rematerializes directly in his path, arms and wings wide open for an embrace.

The fledgling startles in shock but doesn’t seem able to halt his momentum, instead slamming full-force into the phantom - and the force is a whole lot more than Wilbur had bargained for. 

He supposes he should have expected this, now knowing exactly how Tommy escaped his captors. But he was a little too caught up in his instincts to consider Tommy as anything other than small and scared and helpless.

Small and scared though he is, the little one is decidedly not helpless. Wilbur receives that knowledge thoroughly when the force of his treasure slamming into his torso instantly caves his major sternum and turns his body into a useless, limp collection of sheer agony. He only feels pain in his wings when his body connects with the ground, but it’s immediately washed out by the whitening impact of the human falling on top of his collapsed chest.

Wilbur has seen Techno reduce countless beings to similar states in a single blow, but he’s been lucky enough to have never been on the receiving end before. He feels a twinge of sympathy for all the enemies they’ve slayed.

With all of his intense distress, the phantom’s body is trying to take in oxygen, but the weight of his bones is too crushing to allow his small lungs to fill. At least the sternum collapsed in the center so nothing pierced through any internal organs. 

Shades of the Abyss, he’s going to force Kristin to heal him again– Why can’t he stop being so reckless and get a better handle on his damn instincts? He doesn’t even know why his treasure started panicking like that! Maybe Wilbur did something that scared him, so of course he tried to run away! Stupid, stupid–

“...bur! Wilbur!” His treasure is so distressed again.

The phantom whines. He’s such a terrible protector! Wilbur acted on his instincts and now his treasure is scared and guilty because he accidently hurt him!

“Please, help! I didn’t- I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry– ” 

“Oh, my dearest Wilbur,” his mother says so mournfully, like she’s feeling Wilbur’s pain as her own.

Oddly, she might be feeling it more than he is right now. He feels so distant, like he can no longer feel anything at all. It feels a little bit like dying, but he knows that won’t happen with Kristin at his side.

 As if to assure him of that conviction, warmth spreads over the numbness, crackling his pain back to life in the center of his chest. But along with it, the crushing pressure vanishes and air floods his lungs with an impossibly refreshing aftertaste. He gasps it in greedily, each breath washing the pain duller and duller.

Untranslated muttering streams from his treasure’s lips and Wilbur’s vision finally returns to the sight of that same hydrogen-based liquid pouring recklessly down reddened cheeks.

Finally some translated words sputter out between all the distressed gibberish: “ So– sorry– I’m– sorry, sorry– I was scared! ”

With a devastated whine, Wilbur reaches out for the fledgling, ignoring the still-prickling pain - only whining louder when he flinches back. This only seems to upset Tommy further, clawless hands bunching into tight balls. 

“Don’t– I’m crying, I’ll– burn you! ” he cries, almost snarling. “ Why are you even– I hurt you, why are you worried about me?! ”

Kristin catches the phantom, helping him sit up. The agony has almost entirely been replaced by warmth now, which means his mother surely out-did herself.

“You were scared,” Wilbur answers simply, unable to keep himself from whining despite the way it’s clearly aggravating his treasure. “Scared of me. ”

The fledgling blinks, jaws falling open. “ I– I didn’t– ” He hesitates, eyes dropping away as he rubs at his face.

“What was it that scared you, starlight?” Kristin prompts - and Shades, she sounds so tired.

The phantom briefly tears his attention from his treasure to check on her and finds her dark as a void. No more than a dozen stars twinkle in her eyes and her matter hangs heavy and lifeless. Wilbur has scarcely seen his mother so drained.

“Mother–”

“Not now, Wil,” she retorts instantly, as if anticipating his concern and prematurely dismissing it as foolish.

But Wilbur is not about to be told off so easily. He wants nothing more than to care for his treasure, but his mother is being a reckless hypocrite and that is not something he can just ignore.

“You need to rest!” he hisses. “You’re only extending your Stasis with–”

“I am well aware of my limits and how far I can push them,” she replies easily, in that tone she uses when she’s leveraging her ancientness in order to talk to him like a phantling. “Stasis can wait until after we bring Tommy home.”

Jaws clicking shut with petulant force, WIlbur holds back a hiss. This is a fight he’s not going to win, especially not while Tommy is sitting right there, still distressed and untended to. He struggles to compose himself as his mother turns back to his treasure, smiling softly.

“Sorry, Tommy. Please, tell us what distressed you.”

Ducking his head so that the golden curls fall over his eyes, his treasure begins to pick at the red imprints on his neck and the edges of his mouth. He doesn’t speak for a long while, picking, scratching and rubbing away tears.

“I… I thought… ” Tommy’s voice is so small and so fragile, and his gaze stays hidden behind the gold. “ I thought you were going to muh-zull me. ” 

Warbling confusion, Wilbur tilts his head. “What was that word? It’s not translating–” the phantom attempts to recreate the sounds but doesn’t think he gets anywhere close.

“Oh, muh-zull?” the human repeats the sound and Wilbur clicks affirmation.

However, this only seems to make Tommy shrink into himself even more. Whatever he’s talking about, it surely isn’t anything pleasant - and that makes Wilbur’s claws twitch.

“It’s, uh… On Earth, people put them on dangerous (creatures, beasts) so they can’t bite anyone. They’re cruel and… they hurt. I don’t like them. ”

“Oh, starlight…” Kristin coos, fingers brushing through the gold.

Horror floods the phantom at the implication and he whines. “Why would you think I would do such a thing to you? I’d never hurt you, treasure!”

The fledgling’s shoulders hunch, but he raises his head at last, blue peeking out from under the gold. “That… that thing you were holding… It looked like one. ”

Trying desperately to recall, Wilbur suddenly straightens. “The oxy-mask? Oh, treasure, no! That was just to help you breathe, nothing more!”

But Tommy still looks hesitant, a touch of fear returning to his round, blue eyes. “Can I not breathe out there without it?” he asks, like he’s dreading the answer.

“No, the air is not dangerous for you! I just wanted to be safe, just in case.”

“I don’t want it, ” Tommy replies immediately, jaws stiff.

“Tommy–” Kristin tries to cut in diplomatically, but she gets nowhere as the fledgling shakes his head side to side with aggressive force.

“Please. Don’t make me wear it, ” he almost whines, moisture pooling in his eyes again. “I… I won’t feel safe. ”

That breaks it for Wilbur. The phantom feels his pupils blowing, instincts shrieking for him to take the fledgling into his arms and retreat to his den. Except his den isn’t here - it’s all the way at home with the rest of his haunt.

“Okay,” he blurts, gasping for air in an attempt to get some fraction of control over his instincts. “Okay, you don’t have to wear it. But if you start to feel strangely, you have to tell us right away.”

“Even if we haven’t picked out your items yet,” Kristin adds, immediately mirroring the strict caretaker tone that Wilbur hadn’t even realized he’s slipped into. “We’ll make sure you get them another way. Your health is most important, okay?”

His treasure gratefully and eagerly accepts these terms, no longer trepidatious about leaving the shuttle. Luckily Wilbur finds no trouble getting to his feet again, though he does give his best effort at convincing his mother to stay back and try regaining the energy she’s severely lacking. 

Of course she refuses - Wilbur is not looking forward to Phil’s reaction to any of this.

But the phantom momentarily forgets about all of this when he sees his treasure light up like a supernova the moment he steps out on Ramnus’ surface. The ground is covered in lush, soft, squishy moss and multi-coloured, bowl-shaped flora - all of which the human seems to find delightful. 

The sky is a gorgeous violet, sporting only one red sun and countless large, fuzzy, flying creatures known as pom’pems. They’re responsible for the majority of Ramnus’ diet of sweet, sticky treats, and they’re friendly as long as you are friendly with them.

As soon as Tommy spots them, he shouts out: “Bees!” and immediately rushes to touch one.

“Tommy!” Wilbur squawks in terror, flying several clicks to his treasure’s side in a single second. 

The human stumbles to a stop, out-stretched hand pausing as he looks up to the phantom in confusion. Wilbur places himself between Tommy and the pom’pem with an exasperated click, the creature lazily fluttering away with disinterested rumbling.

“What are you doing?!” Wilbur questions, instincts still rattling him with the way his treasure just raced aggressively towards a potentially dangerous creature without care.

His treasure just blinks at him. “They’re fuzzy! They look like bees! I wanted to p-eh-t one! ”

All communication fails Wilbur for approximately three seconds. He looks desperately up to his mother as she arrives, pinpricks of green stardust blinking in her void-like eyes. When her gaze provides him no further insight, the phantom looks back down at his treasure.

“Tommy– You can’t just– run up and touch random creatures! They could attack you!” he explains, flabbergasted that this is somehow a foreign concept to the human.

Nevertheless, the human’s face scrunches up in response. “They weren’t gonna do anything, they’re just fuzzy little guys! (Human male - plural) I bet they like scritches! (???)” 

“What in the Abyss are you saying?!”

As if to prove the point, Tommy’s response is entirely nonsense that Wilbur’s translator hardly even bothers with. The reckless human seems dead-set on touching the pom’pems and the phantom quickly has to scoop him off the ground to prevent him from succeeding.

“Stop that!”

“I want one! ” his treasure huffs, squirming and thrashing in Wilbur’s claws.

Jaws dropping open, Wilbur again looks to his mother in disbelief before clicking and sputtering. “You– You can’t have a pom’pem! They’re not domesticated!”

“They’re called pom-poms?!” Tommy squeals, almost as high-pitched as a phantling’s whistle, before his bright face crumples into something hostile. “But you said I could have whatever I wanted! You said you’d give it to me! ”

Wilbur stiffens, suddenly feeling very cornered. They did promise that to Tommy, and they meant it! But pom’pems have awfully complex needs and are incredibly dangerous if provoked - their venom is paralyzing and could easily kill a being of Tommy’s size. 

And there’s no way to remove their venom without killing the beasts! The risk is far too high for them to fulfill Tommy’s requests, but now they’re upsetting him and going back on a promise right as he’s starting to trust them! 

Kristin lets a low drone, head sagging to her hands - a familiar sign that she’s also feeling dangerously outwitted by a stubborn little fledgling.

“How about this, Tommy–” she jumps in, mercifully taking the heat off of Wilbur. “We’ll ask the vendors if they have any domesticated pom’pems for you to… how did you say? ‘Pet’? 

A bolt of fear strikes through Wilbur as his treasure suddenly bares all his teeth, but instead of more growling or hissing, Tommy lets out more shrill squeals, thrashing again.

“Yes! Yes! Let’s go, let’s go! Put me down! ” he insists eagerly, attempting to take off as soon as the phantom returns his feet to the ground.

But Wilbur keeps a hold of his treasure’s tiny, fragile wrist, instantly being forced to stumble along at an awkward pace. This speed would be no problem to keep up with in flight, but his feet are not built well for running like the human’s clearly are.

An ingenious idea flickers to life in the phantom’s mind and he lets out a chitter, wings spreading wide as he bends down and snatches Tommy into his arms. The fledgling lets out a startled squawk as he’s pulled back and off the mossy surface once more, but it quickly turns into almost his own form of chittering as Wilbur lifts off and takes them both soaring into the violet sky.

A trill of delight leaves Wilbur at the sight of his treasure already enjoying himself so much - they haven’t even gotten to the good part yet. The phantom flaps his wings, climbing higher and higher in powerful bursts. Normally he doesn’t need so much build-up, but normally he doesn’t have a passenger. Tommy lets out a strange sound, almost like a shuttle’s siren. He’s staring out at the sky like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Relishing the moment, Wilbur hesitates just a moment longer before he sets his sights on a path just a few clicks from the market. (He has to be sure to pick a target far enough from any structure or being, to ensure he isn’t mistaken as hostile and attacked.) 

As soon as he focuses in on his target place, pupils shrinking to slits, he lets his hunter’s instincts take over. His body goes rigid - tail straight, wings pinning back for a dive - and he releases a bone-chilling shriek. 

They streak down from the sky in a dizzying dive, crossing the entire distance to the market path in almost a single moment. Tommy barely has time to let out a shriek of his own, but he makes up for it by continuing the shrieking long after the two of them land.

“Tommy–”

More screaming and gibberish. His treasure is thrashing again, but he’s holding onto Wilbur’s arms with a grip that is more than a little painful. The phantom lowers them both down onto the moss, clicking concerned now.

“Tommy! We’re safe, what’s wrong–?”

“That was fuh-king paw-gers!” he shouts, whirling around to face Wilbur with that starry-eyed look again. “We went so fast! I thought we were gonna fuh-king die! Do it again! ” 

They do it twice more before Kristin catches up, and her sparkling red dulls into gleaming orange at the incessant, delighted squealing coming out of Tommy. The fledgling is bouncing up and down, trying to coax Wilbur into swooping them up for a fourth time, but Kristin cuts in firmly.

“Enough of that for now. We still don’t know if this atmosphere is healthy for you, so let’s not keep pushing that,” she says pointedly, and Wilbur folds his wings with an apologetic croon.

The fledgling wilts a bit, but quickly bounces back, grabbing Wilbur’s hand and dragging him towards the market. There is a small crowd wandering around the vendors and the phantom instantly feels his instincts flare, claws curling protectively around his treasure’s soft hand. He puffs out his wings as he walks, glaring down anyone who dares look their way.

The crowd is smart enough to give them a wide berth, heads ducking low as if in the presence of enderians. Wilbur is satisfied, tugging Tommy to approach a familiar vendor.

“Wilbur! Kristin!” A roughly-accented voice greets through layers of sharp teeth.

Being part totemite, part guardin, the golden being always appears a little off-putting - his green eyes always glow and his teeth are always barred. But Wilbur’s more than used to Foolish by now, having known Niki and Puffy so long. He whistles a greeting in tune with his mother, pulling his treasure close and watching Foolish’s eyes light up with interest.

“Foolish! Meet Tommy!” He places a protective hand over the golden curls. “Tommy, this is our friend and contact, Foolish!”

“Did you just call him stupid? ” the human questions suddenly, looking up at Wilbur with his face scrunched up.

The phantom tilts his head. “No? I said his name. Is that translating–”

“Wow, you’re a strange-looking little fella!” Foolish blurts, hunching over his counter to peer closely at the fledgling.

Wilbur has to stifle a sharp hiss and the sudden motion towards his treasure, shuffling a little closer instead. Tommy just blinks for a moment before turning back to Wilbur, wearing an expression that is so starkly comparable to Techno as a shote.

“Nevermind, you’re right. He is stupid. ”

The whistling shriek and loud chittering that bursts out of Wilbur is just too sudden and strong to be held back. He can feel Foolish’s glare on him, thoroughly unimpressed with the humiliation, but he can also hear his mother’s quiet humming as she also struggles to contain her amusement.

“Wilbur,” Foolish cuts in at last, ignoring the continued chitters. “Did your guest just speak a language from a restricted sector?”

“He’s not my guest, ” the phantom corrects immediately, hissing the word like it disrespected him personally. “He’s my soulmate.”

Shock flares bright and yellow in the vendor’s gaze as it flickers between Wilbur and Tommy. Kristin steps forward, leaning just a little onto the counter.

“But yes, our business today does concern Tommy’s unique origins,” she says with a touch of impatience. “Humans are tactile and require warmth. I assume you would have a selection for such a purpose?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Foolish pushes his arms off the counter and floats into the air, tail swishing erratically behind. “Oh– Alright, okay, of course! Yeah, we have lots! What kinda stuff are ya–”

“Do you have any of those bees!?” Tommy exclaims, jumping up onto the counter in a single leap - seeming to surprise himself with the action.

Foolish freezes, tail flicking uncertainly as he slowly turns to Wil and Kristin. The phantom lets out a low, groaning whistle and scrapes his claws through the unkempt, billowing wisps of smoke that are starting to sting at his eyes. They scatter and reform at his touch, clearing his vision for the moment.

“He’s asking about the pom’pems,” he explains flatly. “He wants one, to… have.”

“To have?”

“To keep,” Kristin supplies, grinning something apologetic.

“They’re friend-shaped! ” the fledgling adds helpfully, and the merchant flinches back for a moment before quickly waving his hands in a negative gesture.

“Oh, nah, nah, I’m sorry, but ya can’t take pom’pems off a’ Ramnus! Well, I mean– You can, technically, but it’s a lot of work and they really don’t produce much– You’d need like a dedicated containment chamber replicating their natural habitat and like a whole system set up to farm them–”

Wilbur can see the engineer and architect awakening in Foolish’s eyes as he rambles on and he rushes to reassure him. “We’re not intending to farm them, just to keep one for Tommy!”

“Could the Syndicate gardens accommodate one?” Kristin pipes up again, and Foolish clacks his teeth together, tails swishing thoughtfully.

“Mmm… As they are? Not comfortably. I’ve taken up a project like this before for a whole farm of them and let me tell ya, it is not simple! Those creatures are very particular, and super dangerous to transport! I died three times in that whole fiasco!”

“You what!? ”

Somehow ignoring the sharp exclamation from all of them, Foolish makes the negative gesture again, lowering himself down to Tommy’s eye level. “I’m sorry, little buddy, you’re better off looking for a different beastie friend!”

The trembling of his treasure’s lip is enough to distract Wilbur from interrogating Foolish about being careless with his lives. (Puffy will have a fit when she hears.) Tommy is staring at the ground, more liquid pooling in his eyes and it’s making his instincts hysterical. His treasure is upset! They’re failing him! They promised him anything he wants and they’re failing!

Suddenly, something in Foolish’s words sparks an idea and Wilbur jumps up, wings flapping with excitement as he grasps his treasure.

“Wait, wait, Foolish! You sell bar’keks, right?” he asks, more of a demand than a question.

The fledgling looks up, confused, but Foolish catches on. “Yep! Now those are no problem!” He drifts up, eagerly leading them towards a large, amber structure.

As they follow, Tommy’s gaze keeps drifting back towards the valley and the floating pom’pems and it twists in Wilbur’s chest. But he only ushers his treasure along quicker, growing almost desperate to reveal the surprise he’ll surely adore.

“Come on, come this way, Tommy! Look in here!” he urges as Foolish waves his band and opens the entrance to the bar’kek’s den.

It earns the phantom a funny look, but the important part is that his treasure listens and peeks into the den, leaning to the side to see around Foolish. Wilbur could pinpoint the exact moment Tommy catches sight of the furry beasts inside - his eyes go round, pupils dilating to an almost concerning degree as he lets out the highest-pitched squeal that they’ve ever heard from the human. 

It’s almost like he falls back in time, because the noise sounds exactly like the one Techno made when the piglin first met Floof.

“COWS!!” Tommy shrieks, disappearing into the den with alarming speed.

The phantom launches after him, blessing the Abyss that bar’keks are the least aggressive beasts in the known universe. Seriously, do humans just contain no self-preservation instincts? How is this fledgling so reckless as to run full speed at large, unfamiliar beasts with the intention to touch them? Does Earth not have predators?  

Apparently none that Tommy is cautious of, since the little human has already managed to throw himself on top of one of the slumbering bar’keks and practically bury himself in its shaggy, brown fur. Nevermind the fact that the beast is three times his size and twice Wilbur’s - no, jumping on top of an unsuspecting creature much larger than you surely couldn’t be a poor decision!

He should really scold Tommy, let the careless fledgling know how much terror he continues to heap onto both of his guardians with his thoughtless actions. But hearing all the cooing and strange, chuff-chitters spilling out of his treasure as he ruffles up the bar’keks fur - Wilbur can’t bring himself to hold onto anger.

The little human is baring all his teeth again and his eyes look almost maniac, but his lips are turned up in that funny way that Wilbur has learned means he’s happy. Strange that humans smile with their teeth even though they show aggression the same way. He would think they’d get confused - but then again, they have learned to read Foolish despite a similar issue.

The bar’kek raises its head tiredly, twisting its thick neck to look back at the culprit responsible for waking it up from its nap. Tommy lets out another short squeal, scrambling eagerly closer and waving his hands in its face. The beast’s pure black eyes blink slowly and it huffs from its wide snout. The fledgling seems to take this as a returned greeting and squeals more, grabbing onto its head and shoving their faces together.

Wilbur tilts his head at the motion, listening curiously as his treasure rambles on and on to the beast as if it can understand. Humans really are tactile. If this is the appropriate greeting between human and beast, then humans must be constantly expressing their affection this way. 

Shades of the Abyss, how desperately must his treasure be craving this contact? Could this be what’s causing his intense distress? He did calm down when Wilbur sheltered him– Oh, Shades, is he in pain? Was it killing him?

“Your name is Henry Two! But don’t think that means I’m comparing you, it’s just the best name and there’s no point in trying to improve perfection– ”

A shrill, strangled whine tears out of Wilbur and he has his treasure in his arms and under his wings before the phantom even realizes he’s moving. Tommy squawks in surprise, thrashing a little but not really fighting as long claws start trailing through the gold.

“What are you–? Let go, I was getting cuh-dulls (???) from Henry and they’re way superior! ”

The bar’kek huffs as if to agree with whatever the fledgling is trying to say, but Wilbur just whines more, clutching tighter to his treasure. His instincts are making it very hard to think right now, and he really just needs to get them all home to the nest.  

When he’s finally back with his haunt, safe and surrounding his treasure with anything and everything he could ever want, then maybe Wilbur will finally be able to let his frazzled mind rest.

“You like the bar’kek?” he manages, tucking tight as possible around the tiny, wriggling body in his arms.

The fledgling pauses, looking up at Wilbur with unmistakable enthusiasm. “The bah- bah-kick?” he struggles. “S’that Henry? ‘Cause then yes! Henry is my child and I love them! ”

“Perfect,” Wilbur clicks, immediately peeking over his wing at his mother and Foolish. “We’ll take this one along with ten small blankets and every piece of thermal wear you have that’ll fit him.”

The phantom chooses to ignore the amused looks the others give him - he knows his pupils must be blown to voids and he’s practically vibrating with the need to shelter, provide, protect. It’s not like he can help it! 

This isn’t just his protector instincts responding to a fledgling, this is his soulmate! His tiny, reckless, contact-starved, human soulmate! How is he supposed to be normal?

“Did you just say we can keep Henry…? ” 

The tiny voice is so fragile and hopeful, like he’s hearing something far too good to be true. When Wilbur looks down and meets his treasure’s gaze, any feeble grip he had on what remains of his logical mind is lost completely. Those round, blue eyes are bright as stars and brimming with that same liquid. 

A clawless hand grips the phantom’s sleeve like a lifeline - like he somehow believes Wilbur could ever truly deny him. (The pom’pems were merely postponed - nothing in the universe will prevent them from attaining everything their little one desires.)

“Of course,” Wilbur vows through involuntary warbles and coos. “She is yours.”

–

This is the best day of Tommy’s life. He’s not sure if it’s still the same one where he escaped captivity and almost watched his– watched this weird, overly-protective alien die in front of him, but even if it is, the good stuff is definitely out-weighing all of that.

He’s dressed in fucking poggers alien clothes - he’s got clunky but epic-looking black boots, new silky, shiny, yellow pants and this weird, red and white, wonky poncho thing. And that’s just one of the outfits the aliens got him! Tommy’s never even seen this many clothes! Which is kind of wild, that he has more clothes now in space than he ever did on Earth.

And on top of that, they got him a shit ton of fluffy, silky-soft blankets that Wilbur hasn’t stopped trying to burrito him in. In fact, the weird-ass alien hasn’t been giving Tommy any personal space since they met Henry. He seems to be making a point to touch Tommy, whether it’s resting a clawed hand on his shoulder, or running those claws through his hair, or straight-up scooping him off the floor and trying to burrito him!

It’s annoying as hell, even if the boy secretly doesn’t mind all the grounding contact. It’s stupidly comforting, but he’ll never admit that. 

The only time the dumbass will leave him alone is when he’s cuddling Henry, so Tommy has attached himself to the massive, fluffy animal for the past hour. Not that he wouldn’t be doing so anyway - Henry is wonderful company and hands-down the best part of Tommy’s amazingly poggers day. He still can’t believe the universe has blessed him with her presence.

She honestly looks more like a cross between a wooly mammoth and a brown cow, but that only makes her more perfectly amazing. He’s been rambling non-stop to her and she’s just as good of a listener as her predecessor.

“...So I just get up to go, right? But get this - Mrs. Spencer spins around and points at me with this super ugly mad face and–” Tommy chokes, coughing into his fist.

A stinging pain burns through his throat as he coughs again and he groans, rubbing his throat. Maybe he’s been talking too much, it has been a long time since he’s talked at all. His voice could use a break. Henry huffs, butting his head to show she’s fine to hear the end of the story another time. Tommy grins, petting her snout gratefully.

“Thanks, girl… I just… need a bit.”

Maybe he should ask the aliens for more water? But he really doesn’t want to set Wilbur off again… That dumbass just got off his case, the last thing Tommy wants to do is get him all mother hen again. 

He sighs, rubbing his forehead. A headache has been building for the past while, basically since they got back to the spaceship. Come to think of it, the scratchiness in his throat and heaviness in his nose and chest started around then, too.

“Oh nooo, ” Tommy whines, burying his face in Henry’s fur. “Of course I’m fucking sick… The universe can never just be kind to me, can it, Henry?”

The cow-beast huffs sympathetically. The boy appreciates it. He hates being sick - he gets all weak and loopy and it’s so much easier for people to push his buttons and fuck with him. 

His foster siblings loved poking at him, knowing he couldn’t fight them off until he was better. And his foster parents hated it, screaming at him for being lazy and dramatic and forcing him to do chores and go to school. It was always so exhausting and terrifying, being so fucking helpless and never knowing when it would end.

At least it just seems like a cold so far. Prime help him if he gets a fever - Wilbur will absolutely take the opportunity to successfully burrito him and Tommy will be imprisoned in his clutches until whenever he gets better. He shudders at the thought. So what if the alien dumbass is comforting? Tommy does not like feeling trapped.

A blue flash and a light chime makes the boy stiffen on Henry’s back, clutching tighter to the puffy blanket around his shoulders.

“Tommy? May I come in? ” Wilbur’s whistley voice passes through the little room’s door.

Of course this clairvoyant dumbass would show up at this exact moment. Carefully and quietly clearing his throat, Tommy sits up a bit.

“Uh… Sure.”

It’s still a little strange to get used to giving permission for people– and aliens, too– to enter his space. These aliens are the first ones to ever ask for it. He can’t deny that he likes the shallow bit of security it offers him.

The hiss of the door opening only makes him jump a little, holding it in because he was prepared for it. And the winged alien’s creepy, jack-o-lantern face is still plenty unsettling, but the jump for joy that his heart makes at the sight of his protector makes up for it.

Plus, Wilbur is walking in all hunched over, claws picking at each other and wings twitching. His pupils have only marginally shrunk since Tommy last saw the bitch and he blows a breath into Henry’s tickly fur.

“What is it, Wilbur?” he asks, like a teacher to a toddler.

The alien fidgets more, glancing everywhere but Tommy’s eyes. “I just… came to check up on you. And… let you know that we’ve prepared more rations with heat and sodium-chloride like you requested. ”

The boy sits bolt upright, jaw dropping in surprise. “O-oh! That… I didn’t mean to request, I was just telling you that’s how we like to do it,” he explains, guilt swimming in his gut.

But Wilbur just makes some clicking sounds and shuffles closer. “Of course, and we appreciate the knowledge of how to best care for you! Please, come, let us know if we managed! ”

His claws extend invitingly, clearly waiting for Tommy to take his offer - and more than likely preparing to snatch the boy off the floor as soon as he sets his feet on it. Narrowing his eyes at the motion, Tommy climbs off of Henry and quickly throws up a hand before the alien can pick him up.

“Nuh-uh! I can walk, ” he insists, ignoring the sad way his alien seems to deflate.

He pats Henry goodbye and follows the dejected Wilbur down the hall to the ship’s kitchen. The smell hits him first and Tommy brightens, dashing ahead and squirming through the alien’s legs. He had no idea just how much he missed the smell of salt.

Kristin’s sparkly, smiling face greets him over the silver, almost tree-shaped countertop. At least that’s what he assumes it is, since they prepare food on top of it. It’s got all kinds of twisty silver branches that hold up smooth surfaces that are kind of like leaves. He doesn’t know if it’s a real alien plant or a model of one, but it’s cool as fuck.

Almost as cool as the alien knives they have - they have them in all kinds of awesome shapes and sizes, clearly all meant to tear apart tough and crazy alien food. The one Kristin is holding now is just the tiny one, perfect for opening the little square containers of rations. 

But she must be cleaning it or something, because in front of her is an already steaming bowl of salted rations. Tommy’s mouth waters and he sprints over to her, reaching up for the dish. Prime, he’s so glad he remembered the science words for salt! These rations tasted like cold spam and string beans before, so he’s sure they’re going to be delicious now!

“Here you go, starlight,” Kristin hums, a spark of pink scattering in her gaze.

She’s been a lot less shiny and colourful lately, so much so that the pink stands out starkly against void black and sparing stars. Tommy remembers Wilbur telling her she needed to rest - he hopes she’s not overworking herself. Maybe she’s just less shiny now to save energy. That must be what it is.

He grabs the dish eagerly, ignoring the poke-stick she offers and snatching the spam-like ration with his hands instead. He crams it in his mouth and immediately jumps up and down at the delicious, familiar flavour. The texture is closer to a chicken nugget without the breading now, and the taste is like an extra salty burger patty.

The aliens try to scold him for using his hands, but Tommy continues to ignore them, too caught up with the tasty food. He stuffs his cheeks with the string beans next, wriggling joyfully despite the way they lightly burn his mouth.

“It’s so good!” he exclaims before he’s done swallowing, earning a funny face from Wilbur.

“I’m so glad! We’re so lucky we have suitable food in the shuttle, but just wait until we get home! We have goods from across all the unrestricted galaxies!” Kristin says, taking the empty dish back.

Swallowing roughly, Tommy looks away. There that word is again - home. It sends hot prickles down his spine. He’s gotten awfully comfortable here really quickly, and that should scare him much more than it does. 

They’re calling their place ‘home’, like it’s something shared with Tommy, too. His head can’t seem to stop spinning long enough to make sense of it. They got him things - they gave him Henry. They keep making huge, impossible promises and saying them like they mean it. 

And… he might almost believe them. He can’t really expect these aliens to actually keep him forever… can he?

“Treasure? ” 

Wilbur’s dumbass, creepy, alien face is suddenly inches from Tommy’s ear and he jerks back, drawing in a sharp breath to tell the bitch off. But his body picks that moment to rebel, catching the boy off-guard with a powerful, full-body sneeze.

He barely manages to catch it in his elbow - and Wilbur owes Tommy big time for that, who knows how his weird-ass alien genes would handle human germs? But irritatingly, instead of being the relief that a sneeze should be, the boy only finds himself feeling worse. His nose tingles with the desperate urge to sneeze again.

“Ugh… ” he groans, blinking his watery eyes open as he wipes the snot onto his new poncho.

“Tommy! ” 

Wilbur’s shriek makes the boy snap to attention and he looks up into the panicked alien faces suddenly crowding him, reaching out to grasp his face and inspect him. He yelps, stumbling back from the claws that hover over him like sharp needles. An overwhelming panic is suddenly swirling like a hurricane in his chest, scattering Tommy’s thoughts to the winds.

“Starlight, what’s happening? Was it the food?” Kristin demands, far shriller and faster than Tommy’s ever heard her speak before.

“Do you need a de-tox? You’re distressed, come here! ”

“Get the fuck off me!” Tommy snaps, whacking Wilbur’s arms away and taking another few steps back. “The fuck are you guys going crazy for?”

“You’re having a reaction, what’s causing it?”

“Let us help you! ”

Fending off Wilbur’s persistent grasp again, Tommy all but growls out: “I don’t know what you’re fu–” 

But his words are silenced by another viscous sneeze. 

“It’s happening again! ” 

The boy freezes, realization hitting him just in time to get swept off the floor and squeezed into a whining alien’s embrace. Wilbur is rushing away with him before Tommy can gather his wits to speak. The hurricane swirling in Tommy’s chest only grows stronger with each echoing step, but the fear is strangely disconnected - like this panic doesn’t belong to him.

“Wait, guys- Wilbur, I’m fine! It was just a sneeze!” he tries to explain as they’re suddenly racing through the doors of the medical room.

The clingy alien sets him down inside a pod, his mother frantically pulling up floating screens.

“What is that? Is it painful? ” Wilbur interrogates desperately, pawing at the pod’s invisible barrier like he’d very much like to claw through it.

“It– No, not really–” he sighs, dragging his hands over his face. “It’s just something that happens! I’m fine, it’s like, helping me, really.”

The alien makes a whiny noise, looking to his mother. “Is he okay? ”

And Tommy finds that kind of rude, checking with another alien about how okay he is rather than the expert himself. But he supposes he is getting scanned or whatever by their alien medical tech, so hopefully she’ll be able to confirm that everything is fine and there’s no need to be so dramatic.

Kristin, however, has not looked away from the screens yet. Her eyes and hair are swirling with bright, reddish pink and Tommy’s not sure if that’s a good sign or not. From what he can tell, she turns that colour when she seems happy, but it’s also the colour that heals, so she’s also usually like that when she’s worried.

“Something is building up in his air passageways and it’s limiting his breathing,” she declares suddenly, swiping erratically at more screens.

Ah. Worried it is, then. Great.

Leaping to his feet with a rapid flap of his wings, Wilbur grabs his mother’s arm and peers desperately at the floating screens. “ Is it a toxin? Debris? How can we clear it? ”

Tommy can’t lie, the space lady’s initial description sounded scary and he can’t totally blame them for freaking out, but this is really getting out of hand. And it’s awfully difficult to communicate through the barriers of language, sickness, and overwhelming, foreign fear.

“It’s some kind of fluid his body is producing, it appears to–”

 “Guys, it’s really just a cold, it’s no big deal–”

“You know what’s causing this? ” Wilbur chirps, perking up with volatile energy. “Do you know how to treat it? ”

“Uh, well–” Tommy winces, scratching the back of his head. “You don’t exactly treat it, you just kinda… wait and rest until it… goes away.”

The two aliens stare at him like he just grew three heads. He sighs.

“What in the Abyss do you mean!? ”

“I mean I’m fine! ” Tommy huffs, reaching around to try to find a way out of this pod thing. “That ‘fluid’ building up is just mucus, it happens to humans all the time! It’s probably just from going from cold to hot or something!”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were sensitive to temperature changes!?” Kristin cries, thankfully taking mercy and dropping the invisible barrier even though her worry clearly hasn’t diminished any. “We could have accommodated so this didn’t happen!”

“Because–” Tommy grunts, immediately being smushed against Wilbur’s chest as he tries to step out. “It’s not a big deal! It was bound to happen with how things were with those dumbfucks who took me, I’m just shocked it took this long!”

Incredibly unhelpfully, the boy’s voice starts to break from all the yelling and he chokes a bit, swallowing stinging. The aliens are making all kinds of desperate noises like he’s about to keel over and die, and Wilbur’s chest is actually heaving as rapidly as a human hyperventilating as his claws run repetitively through Tommy’s hair.

“What’s wrong, treasure? Can you breathe!? ” he whistles, cupping the boy’s face.

Meeting the alien’s gaze, it finally hits Tommy all at once - this powerful hurricane of terror that suddenly invaded the boy’s mind is mirrored back to him in Wilbur’s eyes. Through whatever strange bond apparently connects the two beings, Tommy is feeling Wilbur’s fear.

Impulsively, Tommy reaches up and rather than swatting him away again, he cups the alien’s face in his own hands. Or at least, as much as he can with his limited grasp. Wilbur’s face is cool to the touch, like the rest of him - but not cold. He’s always warmer than the cold.

The boy wills himself to reach through the endless, suffocating panic that surrounds the two of them and make his protector hear him. It seems to be working so far - Wilbur is frozen, dark pupils leaving only a sliver of yellow as he stares back.

“I… can breathe,” he starts, clearing his throat to limited success. “Just… hard to talk.”

Both aliens huddle close now, and a warm, pink hand presses on top of his head. Decent start, at least they stopped screaming. But he still needs to calm them down because he’s pretty sure he just made them more scared.

“I. Am. Okay. Just need rest,” he adds pointedly, relieved that it suddenly feels less rough to talk.

A warm tingle replaces the previous sting in his throat and Tommy whirls around to Kristin. Sure enough the pink glow has faded from her touch and she’s smiling at him - dark and tired. He frowns, guilt and anger mingling.

“You didn’t have to do that!”

She makes a deep click, smile fading - as if Tommy’s the one being stupid! She just wasted her energy, and considering the fact that his head still pounds and his nose is still plenty congested, all she did was heal his scratchy throat for a bit! 

He’s guessing her powers are limited to healing injuries, and these aliens probably don’t know the first thing about sickness. Lucky bastards…

“It is my choice to care for you, little one,” she retorts, like it’s not the craziest thing she could say.

“You wasted your powers over something that could’ve been solved with a drink of water!” he snaps right back, startling when Wilbur jumps up and takes them away.

The alien awkwardly parrots the word ‘water’, making a beeline for the kitchen again. Tommy sighs, resigning himself to the transport. He’s once again grateful he knew the science word for water, and extra lucky that it’s still a common thing out in space. Though, apparently none of Wilbur’s family use it for drinking, they still have some stored on the shuttle for other stuff.

The alien shifts Tommy over to one arm and grabs the jug-like container, pouring the water into a smaller bottle. But it only fills up halfway and Wilbur lets out a long, sharp, keening sound, shaking the jug rapidly like it’s going to suddenly produce more liquid.

“Hey, hey– Stop freaking out, it’s not urgent, you can just get more!” Tommy sighs, raising his eyes to Prime and reaching out for the half-filled bottle. 

He drinks it down while Kristin leaves to fetch more and Wilbur continues to be insufferably overbearing. He won’t stop whining, clinging to Tommy like a helpless, withering baby no matter how often he reminds the bitch that he’s perfectly fine!

This is almost worse than being sick in foster care. At least other humans gave Tommy his personal space - mostly to avoid catching his germs, but the principle is the same. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad if he could get rid of all this heart-racing panic, but the alien just refuses to calm the fuck down.

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m fine?”

Wilbur isn’t even responding in translatable words anymore, just cradling Tommy tighter and whimpering. At least he keeps giving him head scritches - this dumbass alien may be pathetic and massively annoying in most other ways, but his claws feel like absolute heaven on Tommy’s scalp.

Fuck, his eyes are getting heavy.

“Y’know, if you let me sleep, I’d get better much faster,” the boy bargains, raising a brow at the noisy, fidgety alien.

Tilting his head like a bird, Wilbur clicks a few times before shifting Tommy around until his back is pressed against the alien’s chest, and he’s strapped down under his blanket by four clawed limbs and tucked under a cool chin and two large, dark wings.

The boy blinks. Did he just…? 

With a soft coo, Wilbur nestles further into his hair, clearly content with himself. Tommy’s cheeks light ablaze. Son of a fuck, this bitch-ass alien just fucking burritoed him! The audacity! The humiliation! And the worst part is how unbelievably comfortable it is!

He has to fight - for the sake of his pride, his big man reputation! But his sluggish body is just so perfectly snuggled and warm, the pressure on him is so calming, he can’t even bring himself to move. It would be so much effort, and he’s just so relaxed…

Slowly, his eyes droop shut. It’s nice and dark under these wings, and so safe. In all honesty, Tommy doesn’t think he’s ever felt this at peace in his life.

“Wilbur–” Kristin’s weirdly pitchy voice cuts through the sluggish darkness.

The boy lets his displeasure show with a short groan, but the rest of his sleepiness is snapped away when Wilbur jolts up. Tommy’s eyes fly open but he’s still covered by black wings. What is going on? Why are the aliens freaking out now? 

He gets his answer when Kristin speaks again.

“This is the last of the H2O.”

Panic crashes back on top of Tommy like a tidal wave, and he honestly can’t tell if it’s his or Wilbur’s now. He doesn’t know yet if he should be scared - he can’t see!

“What!? Don’t we have more in the engine room?! ”

“Let me see!” Tommy barks, trying to unwrap himself and push away the alien’s wings.

“This is from the engine room!”

“Let me see how much you fucking have!” the boy growls out, instantly flinching as the wings finally curl back and reveal the room around him.

His eyes take a moment to adjust and he misses a bit of frantic speech from the aliens, but he finally spots the last of the water that Kristin is referring to - a single jug held in her hand. Ah. He swallows hard, wincing as it stings.

It’s a decently-sized jug at least - he could certainly survive off of it for a few days if he needs to. He’s gonna feel like shit, but that’s fine. He’ll live.

“We took a detour, the quickest route through neutral space is far too many cycles for this to last!” Kristin is saying, apparently responding to something Wilbur asked.

Tommy tenses. Shit. His head is starting to swim, getting caught up in the speeding winds of that swirling hurricane. He doesn’t have to drink every day, maybe he could stretch it? He’s pretty sure water every three days is enough to keep him alive, he’ll just hope and pray he doesn’t get a fever–

“Isn’t there any closer planet we can restock on? ”

“None that would both carry H2O and let us land! We’re too close to enemy territory, we’d be better off cutting through to get to base than attempting to enter any planet’s atmosphere–”

“Fine, we’ll do that then! ” Wilbur hisses, pulling his arms off Tommy to swipe at his bracelet.

A couple floating screens pop up and the alien swipes through them with anxious clicks and whistles. Images of planets and something that might be a star map appears and Wilbur relaxes just a microscopic amount.

“We can pass through to base in just over a cycle. We’ll just have to– ” 

Something shifts in the alien’s expression, like a shadow snuffing out the last torchlight in the depths of a cave. There’s something familiar about it, in a way the boy can’t decide is good or bad. He glances curiously at where Wilbur’s looking and finds a floating model of a planet, spinning lazily.

“Wilbur? Moonshine?” Kristin prompts worriedly. “What’s the problem with Ex-D9? Don’t tell me you blew up another city there–”

The other alien speaks up before Tommy has time to process that one. 

“No, it’s just… It’s Essempi territory, ” he hisses, like a curse.

The name rings in Tommy’s head with some strange sense of dread even though it means nothing to him. But neither he nor Kristin have to ask before Wilbur tells them why.

“They’re the ones that took Tommy. ” 

A chill prickles down the boy’s spine as Kristin stiffens. Oh… Perfect. Tommy lets out a heavy sigh, rubbing at his eyes with the base of his palms. Of course he can’t be done with those bitches yet, that would be just too much to ask! This can’t be great for his headache.

A hand rests on his shoulder, squeezing gently. He looks up to see Kristin staring forward determinedly, her other hand swiping at her open floating map.

“...We’ll give them as wide a berth as possible, but this is the safest route for us to take. We’re only a shuttle, we shouldn’t set off any signals from just passing by,” she declares stiffly, pressing a few invisible buttons and then fiddling with her watch.

“I’ll transmit to base, just in case.”

The other alien clicks affirmation and Tommy feels like he can finally breathe in the tense atmosphere again, no longer swamped with panic despite the circumstances. He gets to enjoy that for about two seconds before he’s getting attacked by a clingy alien with a blanket again.

“No– Off! Bad alien!” Tommy scolds, dodging swadling swipes.

But the bitch makes a bunch of angry clicking, unrelenting. “You need to rest! ”

“Exactly, bitch! How ‘bout you fuck off and let me do that!”

The alien whines, wings flaring as he lunges for Tommy again. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, treasure! Let me give you contact! ”

Stumbling back and slipping around Kristin, the human bares his teeth, clutching her leg like a pillar of protection. “The fuck– If you’re trying to not make me uncomfortable, you’re fucking failing, bitch!”

“Did I just hear somethin’ speak English?” a new voice suddenly blurts, made up of deep growls and snorts.

Immediately, Tommy is reminded of a boar and his muscles tense instinctively, hairs on his neck rising. He jerks his head to the sound and finds another floating image hovering over Kristin’s wrist, but this one is in the shape of a massive, pig-like alien - or, the pig alien’s bust at least. 

The new alien has giant tusks, red eyes and is covered in pink fur, some of which is braided decoratively around their head and neck. They have a wide snout, floppy ears, and are absolutely decked out with gold jewelry.

The boy’s jaw falls open. He’s never seen anyone so badass in his life (aside from Kristin, obviously). As soon as he comes to this conclusion, the first alien is joined by another badass - this one is basically a massive black bird with fucked-up proportions, yellow head feathers, piercing blue eyes and clawed arms.

Neither alien has seen Tommy yet, and the boy starts mentally preparing himself for making eye-contact.

“Yes, Techno, you did. Your translator isn’t malfunctioning,” Kristin replies warmly.

The bird guy cuts in before the pig one - Techno, apparently, which finally sounds like an alien name for once - can question any further.

“Kristin? Your signal is- Oh, love, you’re dark! Did something happen? ” The alien’s speech sounds awfully similar to Wilbur’s, though a little rougher - like a crow.

Wilbur suddenly tries to take advantage of Tommy’s stunned state and almost gets him in another burrito, but the boy manages to wriggle away and retreat to the other side of Kristin. He sticks his tongue out at the bitch, ignoring his big eyes and little whine.

“Yes, angel. There’s been a big change of plans,” she answers, resting a hand on Tommy’s curls and tilting her wrist down towards him.

The boy is caught off-guard, tongue still sticking out when he locks eyes with the badass aliens. He retracts his tongue hurriedly, instinctively tucking a bit closer to Kristin. He can’t help it, staring is scary and they’re fucking intimidating! 

But then something familiar happens - blood red and icy blue are both quickly swallowed by void black as both aliens let out short, startled noises. Tommy doesn’t know whether to laugh or groan at the fact that these ones are also doing Wilbur’s weird, big-eyed thing. He hasn’t really decided how he feels about it in general.

A soft, melodic sound spills from Kristin, breaking the moment enough for Tommy to tear his own eyes away, and she pets his hair. “Yes, I knew you two would adore Tommy as well. He’s a human, from Earth - and he’s only a fledgling! ”

The sound of squeals and cooing explodes through the transmission and heat rushes to Tommy’s face, making his head spin. 

“I am not! I told you I’m a big man, not a baby!” he shouts, pulling back from Kristin only to immediately stumble back into Wilbur’s opportunist-as-fuck embrace.

“Yes he is and he is my fledgling! ” the bitch declares like he’s claiming toys at daycare.

Techno instantly growls at that, baring sharp-as-fuck teeth at Wilbur, who hisses back, squeezing Tommy tighter and partially covering him with his wings.

“ He’s mine, Techno! He’s my soulmate, you can’t have him! ”

The bird alien’s eyes go wide at that. “You’re soul bound…? ”

But this revelation doesn’t seem to mean much to Techno, who growls out: “ You don’t know that he’s not mine, too! Ya can’t just claim him– ”

“Shut up! You just want him because of the gold! ”

“That is not the only reason–”

The bickering is abruptly halted by both Kristin and the bird alien exclaiming some word that Tommy’s translator best defines as brothers, boys or children. Which does a good job of suddenly giving him a whole lot of context.

“You two can continue fighting over Tommy once he is safe and comfortable at home, ” Kristin says, and the words curl in the boy’s stomach like a nice, hot meal.

Even if he can’t say he’s a fan of all the man-handling, or the weird amount of possessiveness from aliens that are practically strangers, Tommy has never been fought over before. It’s pretty much the opposite of his normal - being given away. And he hasn’t even done anything for these aliens. …They don’t even want him to.

“...So just be ready and keep an eye on our signal. We should arrive by the end of this cycle,” Kristin is concluding when Tommy zones back in.

“Of course, love. ”

“And have Niki prepare a medical bay for him! ” Wilbur cuts in, almost breathless, scratching at the boy’s scalp. “ With lots of sanitized H20 and tactile objects for– ”

“We’ll take care of it, Wilbur, ” Techno assures him flatly, and the jittery alien relaxes a little.

“Right… ” he warbles, almost sheepishly. “Right. Thank you, Tech. ”

Deciding he’s had enough of the humiliation, Tommy kicks back - careful to hold back - and knocks his current captor off balance, freeing himself from his burrito prison. (And maybe he does it a little because he wants to show the cool aliens that he isn’t a helpless baby–) He flips Wilbur off for extra measure, even though there’s no way he knows what it means.

“I keep saying I don’t need medicine, I’m just a little sick! It’ll pass! No need to fucking freak out!” he grumbles, crossing his arms defiantly now that he stands free.

It would probably look a little more badass without the big, fluffy blanket draped over his shoulders. But then again, his blanket looks a lot like the cape thing that Techno’s wearing, so nevermind, fuck that - Tommy looks super badass!

Speaking of the pig alien, Techno is narrowing his eyes as he stares at Tommy. 

He suddenly breaks the silence with snorting that translates to the most deadpan reading of the words: “Hasn’t human sickness been responsible for multiple mass genocides of your planet’s population? ”

“It what!? ”

Ignoring Wilbur and Kristin’s horrified responses, Tommy blinks at Techno, caught off-guard. “How the fuck do you know that?”

“Shades of the Abyss, why did we let you outside– ”

“I like to study planets in restricted galaxies - ‘specially their history and languages. Most poachers get lifeforms from restricted systems, so it helps to know lots about ‘em, ” Techno explains, apparently deciding to also ignore the panicking of his family even as Tommy gets scooped up and squished between their bodies.

“Oh,” Tommy says dumbly, pausing to shove Wilbur’s face away and remind him one more time that he’s not dying. “...That’s cool.”

The clingy bitch lets out a sharp whistle and chitter right in Tommy’s ear. 

“Cool? Techno?! ” he exclaims, rich with amusement and disbelief.

“Wilbur–” Kristin scolds, but Techno is already speaking again, continuing to ignore his brother.

“Hey, actually, maybe you can tell me how my English is– ”

The boy brightens, scrambling to sit up straighter in Wilbur’s arms. No way did he actually find an alien who can speak English. He had no idea how much he’s been dying to hear it until Techno mentioned it, but now it’s burning inside him.

He nods enthusiastically, shocked when Techno returns the gesture - it’s another thing that feels so familiar and human that the boy didn’t even realize he was missing.

Then the pig alien opens his jaws and grunts out some extremely rough, goblin version of the English language with an accent thick as molasses - an accent Tommy immediately sneers at.

“Hullo, name’s Techno. How’r ya?” 

Prime, he sounds like a filthy fucking American. Wilbur chitters at Tommy’s face while Techno just blinks blankly, snorting in his native tongue.

“That bad, huh? ”

This only makes Wilbur let out more whistling shrieks, keeling over and bringing down Tommy with him. The boy climbs the bastard like a step stool, perching on his shoulders so he doesn’t lose vision of Techno.

“I don’t associate with Americans, ” he declares. 

Confusion ripples comically through the aliens, but Tommy is unfortunately unable to address any of it. Because of course his body chooses this moment to possess him with yet another powerful sneeze. 

He nearly rockets straight off of Wilbur’s back, especially since his first panicked grip at the bitch’s hair passes right through it like it’s made of smoke. But he manages to hang onto a wing long enough for the aliens to grab and steady him.

“Ugh…” he groans, staying limp as he’s quickly swaddled and held close.

Tommy is just too tired at this point to assure anyone that he’s perfectly alright. His head’s too heavy and his voice is all worn out, and maybe… Maybe it feels a little good to be doted on like this.

Maybe it’s okay for him to just be not alright for a while, and let someone else take care of him.

These are the last things Tommy thinks about, tucked into Wilbur’s impossibly snug burrito, before his eyes close and he finally drifts off to sleep.

–

The alarm blares, flooding the dark room in unmistakable red and hurtling Wilbur back into consciousness. Incoming.

It’s the only warning before the whole shuttle shakes with heavy rumbles and a screech of metal.

They lurch to the side, far too clumsily for it to be intentional. His treasure awakes in his arms with a scream as he hears the echo of his mother’s voice breaking. The phantom’s instincts tear him in two, knowing two pieces of his soul are not both in his shelter.

Wings flaring open, he catches them before impact with the far wall. The shuttle rattles with more metallic screeches, harmonizing with the increasing pitch of countless alarms. They have not corrected course.

A million thoughts race through the phantom’s mind in a split instant as he desperately attempts to assess the situation. They’ve been hit. They had no warning. They’re going down.

Pushing off the wall with a sputtered hiss, Wilbur streaks through the dizzying gravity of the halls towards the cockpit. This is an attack - this is the absolute worst of their fears. But how is this happening!? They’re not a marked vessel, they’re nothing but an unarmed shuttle passing by! No ship should have any reason to fire unprovoked unless–

His treasure whimpers, curling tighter in the phantom’s embrace, corrosive tears soaking into his skin. The realization hits Wilbur the same time that he reaches the cockpit - Tommy has a translator implanted by those Abyss-forsaken poachers. Of course, how could they be so stupid? The bastards tracked him.

“Mother!” Wilbur shrieks, sailing through the doors towards her.

She struggles with the controls as they spin out, diving towards an green planet’s surface. As soon as he calls out she jerks her head to him, eyes and matter swirling with red - but it’s hard to tell if that’s her own light or the flashing alarms.

“Take over for me!” she orders sharply.

Seeing the deep shake spreading through her limbs, the phantom is quick to act. He shifts his treasure to his back between his wings, whistling to keep tight hold of his neck. As soon as his claws grip the steering control, Kristin is on her feet. The weight of the spinning vessel jerks Wilbur across the console and gravity flings with him.

Pain blooms through his arms and shoulders and he hisses, pulling and pulling to just try to right their path as they breach the planet’s atmosphere. It’s a hopeless effort - they’re going down, he can only hope to straighten their landing enough to maybe not let the cockpit hit the surface directly. 

But it’s the only thing his mother told him to do, and it’s taking all his strength! Tommy is screaming, holding so tightly onto Wilbur’s neck that he might just break it. The phantom only just barely hears the hiss and chime of the airlock activating behind him and he shrieks out even though he knows it’s too late.

The swirl of green careens closer and closer, but quickly the screech of persistent alarms is swallowed by a deep, ancient hum that permeates every atom in the known and unknown universe. The void stretches across Wilbur’s certain doom, sparking with countless stars and deep red stardust.

And two hands of the universe take hold of the front of the hurtling shuttle. Kristin’s massive, starlit face stares back at Wilbur for a split moment before her feet meet ground and they’re all sent lurching. 

The walls and floor of the cockpit squeeze under her grip and splinter in with leaping sparks as Wilbur flings into them. He doesn’t attempt to shield himself with his wings, keeping them folded back to guard his shrieking treasure. 

The impact turns his vision white. A familiar burn swallows his torso and he’s filled with a deep, deep sense of wrong. The white fades to the sight of green scraping up in a trail of cerulean debris as his mother’s enlarged, semi-spectral form crumples into it, struggling to halt the shuttle and its momentum.

Wilbur can do nothing but cry out as agony washes over Kristin’s face, her form wavering. But somehow, by the universe’s blessing, they scrape to a stop. 

The very moment they halt, Kristin’s enlarged form is gone and the shuttle instantly dips. Tommy yelps and Wilbur lifts briefly off of the scrapped metal, the feeling oddly similar to floating immaterial through space. And then he slams back down onto it under the weight of inertia - and his treasure.

The relief hits before the pain returns, but panic storms back in quickly after. They just got shot down. Those bastards are tracking Tommy! His mother just transformed and caught their shuttle!  

A distressed whine echoes from deep inside the phantom as he tries to get up. He twists, desperate to check on his treasure, but the fledgling seems to be ahead of him. With a shift of pressure, a puff of gold appears under Wilbur’s wing, followed by leaking, red-rimmed, blue eyes and impossibly rapid squeaking.

“Wilbur, are you okay?! Are you hurt!? Talk to me, please! ” 

Tommy’s hands are trembling when they grasp onto him, searching manically whatever bit of the phantom’s body he can reach. But Wilbur can only focus on the stark red dripping from his treasure’s head and face - he’s never seen it before and he already never wants to again.

“What is this? Are you hurt?” Wilbur gasps, forcing himself to twist further off the splintered floor to reach a claw and swipe the red away.

His treasure flinches back, leaking doubly profusely. “Wh- I’m fuh-king fine dumbass! It’s just– You’re the one who– I’m fine, are you okay?!”

Good, at least the fledgling is still well enough to play tough as usual. But this is really bad - those worthless poachers will be after them any minute and Tommy is hurt and Wilbur isn’t in any condition to fight them and Kristin–

“I’m fine, do you see Kristin anywhere?” he asks quickly. 

He hates to give his injured treasure any task, but he knows they’re running out of time and it will take him far too long to get off this shuttle floor. Luckily, Tommy lights up at the question, instantly climbing onto the damaged console and scanning the area through the cracked pane. 

As his treasure searches, Wilbur attempts to get up, forearms braced and claws digging deep into scrap metal. Every movement causes fresh waves of pain to seize his abdomen and unfortunately confirms his suspicion that the floor has punctured his flesh - and certainly hit something vital. 

He can already feel all the vapour pouring from his body and every instinct screams at him to stay exactly where he is. Pulling free from this will only cause further damage and drastically shorten his timeline, but he has no other choice. They can’t stay here, they have to hide. Techno and Phil surely would have seen their signal go down - he has to get his mother and treasure somewhere safe until help arrives.

So he slowly pushes against gravity, biting back agonized hisses as his torso slides free of the puncturing metal. Wilbur just barely manages to pry himself up when Tommy cries out from atop the console.

“I see her! She’s moving! ” he exclaims, and Wilbur’s never heard sweeter words.

“Good, we need to get to her!”

Adjusting his shawl to cover his injury, the phantom forces himself to his feet with an involuntary chirp of distress. Thankfully, his treasure doesn’t recognize the sound, just focused on getting off the console and finding an exit. 

They squeeze through a hole in the wall and Tommy immediately takes off, crawling over a large clump of mushy green and crumbly blue debris. His treasure appears to be even faster in this planet’s gravity and it makes Wilbur jolt in panic, especially now that he can’t hope to keep up in material form. 

Who knows if this atmosphere is even breathable or healthy for the unwell, injured fledgling? His band was damaged in the crash so he can’t even check!

Cresting the pile, the phantom spots Tommy crouching over his mother and instantly finds himself phasing through ground to collapse at her side. She is moving, as his treasure said, but there isn’t a single star’s light gleaming in her void. Her matter lays plastered to the ground like liquid, and her body seems just as heavy.

The fact that she is still fighting her Stasis at this point is no doubt by sheer force of will. 

“Oh, Mum…” Wilbur whimpers, reaching under and slowly lifting her upper body off the ground - playing off his hiss of pain as one of concern. “Please, just stay with us a little longer - just till we find somewhere to hide.”

She meets his eyes, her pitch black eyes almost unnerving if not for the love and determination in them. “I’m… not going anywhere.”

And Wilbur truly wants nothing more than to crumple up and chirp like a phantling, but he steadies himself instead. Tommy comes around her other side and they both help her stand - though the fledgling acts as more of a cane once she’s up. 

With every step they take, Wilbur finds his own feet dragging slower along with Kristin’s and desperation starts to fray his mind. As long as he stays upright, the pain in his torso is minimal, but his spilling vapour is weakening him but the second. 

He searches the exposed crash sight, scarcely spotting any passable shelter let alone a place to hide. This planet doesn’t appear rich in flora, so instead they wind around hills and rocks, constantly checking the sky for any signs of approaching ships.

Finally, Wilbur spots a small cave entrance and rushes them over to it as quickly as possible. Tommy crawls in first before they can stop him, calling back that it’s perfect. It’s the universe’s mercy when Kristin manages to crawl her own way in so Wilbur can just phase through. 

The opening is narrow but the cave itself is deep and wide, and the phantom collapses in relief - careful to bend his torso as little as possible. His mother sits beside him and Tommy, but does not relax into Stasis as he expects.

Paying no mind to his hypocrisy, Wilbur can’t bear to watch her push so far. Even though he aches to be the only one left to watch over his treasure in such a state, Kristin can not keep pushing her Stasis. If she burns any more energy, she’ll be stuck in Stasis for months - if she hasn’t come close to that point already. 

“Rest now, Mum,” he warbles, curling one clawed hand around her graying one. “You’ve done enough.”

A stubborn thrum echoes through the cave before Wilbur even finishes speaking and she sits up, latching her other hand onto Tommy’s shoulder.

“No. One of you is hurt, I can sense it,” she insists with a pointed glare at both of them.

Three different kinds of horror flood Wilbur in an instant and he tightens his grip. For one thing, he’s terrified that his treasure is also hiding a serious injury and he’ll be helpless to fix it, for another, he can’t believe his mother is intending to use her power again.  

And even worse, if she tries to heal the grave injury that the phantom can feel slowly but surely draining his lifeforce, she will surely reach Supernova! The whiteness flashes in his vision again and it only worsens his panic, his grip tightening around hers.

“Even if we are, there’s nothing you can do about it now!” he grits out, willing her to believe his words. “Don’t even think about it, you’ve pushed your–”

“Endless void, Wilbur- I told you that I know my limits!” she snaps back, pinpricks of pink alighting her eyes. “It’s you that’s hurt, isn’t it?”

The phantom flickers, tearing his immaterial hand away in a panic, shoving Tommy towards her instead. “No, it’s Tommy!”

“Wh- No the fuck it’s not! ”

“He says he’s fine, but look at the red!” Wilbur insists, attempting to scramble back.

But he only manages to send a sharp bolt of pain through his injury and flicker in and out of the ground. Everything goes white and his instincts shriek out hurt pain help danger hurt not safe help– and it all tumbles out in rapid whimpers and chirps.

Reality gets shunted very far away, like he’s just taken a plunge into a deep chasm of H2O but he can barely feel the burning anymore. Just the heat. 

Just his mother’s love rippling through him as he drifts off to sleep - like he’s a fledgling again.

–

Tommy knew something was wrong. Prime, he should have known. 

When they crashed, he should have known that the sharp pain that knocked the wind from his lungs wasn’t a rib cracking. He wasn’t the one who slammed full force into the ship - Wilbur made sure to waste every bit of protection on Tommy!

He should have known when the dumbass told him he was fine despite the fact that he hadn’t picked himself off the ground yet. He should have known when the pain in his ribs seemed to vanish as they were walking even though it should have gotten ten times worse.

Of course the pain he was feeling was Wilbur’s! And of course the fucking bitch was stupid enough to pretend to be fine when he’s literally dying! Why’d Prime have to give him a soulmate who seems so fucking determined to die? 

It’s just cruel to grant him something so perfect - someone made to love him after so many years of aching loneliness - only to tear him away immediately.

Watching Wilbur fall, crying out at the agony that ripples through the boy as well, before fading away - it’s the worst thing Tommy will ever experience.

And as much as he fears for Kristin and knows she should not be using her powers, especially if Wilbur was this insistent, he can’t offer any protest when she throws herself after her son. The dark cave lights up with vibrant pink and blinding sparks. Tommy was shivering moments before, but now the stuffy space feels like a sauna.

The stinging on his cheek and above his brow vanish in the warm glow and the boy tenses in shock. Surely this is far too much power for her to be using! Kristin isn’t even keeping herself up anymore, collapsing on top of Wilbur in the swirl of reddening energy - the heat that no longer feels comforting.

Something is really, really wrong and Tommy’s not going to wait until it’s too late to find out this time. He rushes towards them, feeling the air push and prickle against him like static electricity. The thrum coming from Kristin is growing louder and louder, rattling his bones and slamming his ear drums. But he pushes through.

With a drowned gasp, Tommy grasps the back of Kristin’s dress and pulls. Perhaps he should have thought about that more, because then he might’ve remembered how much stronger he is out here than he was on Earth. 

But he doesn’t think - and so he jerks up the space woman like a ragdoll and pretty much slams her into the wall. Or at least that’s what it sounds like, since the blazing red light is snuffed to total blackness the instant she’s lifted off of Wilbur’s body and he can only hear her impacting something.

He flinches, drawing a sharp breath through his teeth as he slowly lets go of the fabric and fumbles through the darkness for her body.

“Shit, shit, sorry, I’m so sorry, shit–” he murmurs breathlessly as his hands find her, carefully rolling her over to what he hopes is her back.

His eyes are taking ages to adjust and it is not helping his panic. But he quickly realizes as he finally does start seeing shapes in the dark that it’s not going to be much help anyway. Kristin is black as the void - even her skin seems to have gone from purple to dark gray. The only way he’s able to tell as much is by the more vibrant violet of her dress.

The boy’s chest turns to ice at the sight and he nearly loses the rations from earlier. She’s cold, and so limp. She isn’t moving at all. Tommy’s breathing picks up, tears blurring his already shitty vision. She’s not… Fuck, she can’t be dead, can she? 

He didn’t just… Oh, Prime.

Scrambling feverishly, Tommy feels around for Wilbur’s body. Kristin healed him, didn’t she? With all that power she must have! His protector will know what to do - he’ll tell the boy that he’s being crazy. Of course Kristin isn’t dead, she’s just sleeping! She was so tired, she probably needs her rest really badly!

With all the tears and hysteria it takes Tommy way too long to find the other alien. By the time he bumps into a cold, leathery wing, he’s barely able to form coherent thought. He grabs the alien by the shoulders and shakes him desperately, pleading for any sign of life to return to those glossy yellow eyes.

“Wilbur! Wil! ” his voice breaks and burns, interrupted by rapid, vicious sobs. “Wake up, Wilbur! Please, something’s wrong with M- something’s wrong with Kristin! She’s- she–”

He can’t speak - he can’t breathe! Kristin is too dark and cold and still and Wilbur won’t wake up either and Tommy is so scared and helpless and he doesn’t know what to do!

He can’t lose them both, he can’t lose them!

“Wilbur, please! Help me, you promised! ” he wails, crumbling down into the alien’s chest. “You promised you would–”

The anguished words vanish from the boy’s lips in an instant when he hears a sudden sound. Tensing and scrambling off the alien’s chest, Tommy jerks his head to the cave entrance where the sound echoes from. It’s faint but chillingly familiar.

His breath catches and he stares frozen down the tunnel at the weak light spilling in. He hears another sound, thumping and the scrape of claws on chalky terrain. Footsteps getting closer.

“Over here! ” Tommy’s translator picks up the distant but unmistakable, deep growl of Charmander.

No, no no no– He clamps both hands over his mouth, hating the way he thinks of the muzzle, as his mind runs rampant. He was shouting, he was screaming! They’re going to find him, he has to do something, he has to get away!

But he can’t run! He can’t leave his aliens, not like this! Panic and adrenaline thunders in the boy’s chest but this feeling is not unfamiliar. This is fear he has known all his life and there’s only been one way he’s ever dealt with it, so that’s exactly what he’s going to do.

He stands wobbly to his feet over Wilbur’s body, raising his fists and baring his teeth - and he waits. When those bastards find him here, Tommy won’t be running this time. No - if those bitch-ass aliens want to fuck with him, they’re gonna find the fuck out today

As if on cue, Charmander rears his ugly, spiky orange head with a snarl from the mouth of the cave. “ Found him! ”

Snarling back, Tommy takes a few challenging steps forward. His former captor responds by whipping out a translucent whip thing that instantly lights up with crackling sparks. He may have been more accurate with Charmander’s name than he originally thought.

The overgrown lizard lets out a loud roar and dashes forward just as mushroom bitch appears behind him. Tommy gets no time to think - as soon as the sparky whip swings back, the boy kicks off into a sprint. He covers the distance in a single blink, meeting the startled dickhead’s charge with two fists to the would-be groin.

Something caves and cracks brutally, sending Charmander flying back. But his whip continues momentum, catching Tommy’s shoulder with a nasty jolt. The boy ducks and jumps back, narrowly avoiding mushroom bitch’s needle fingers as they swipe for him.

He stumbles but catches himself, darting to the side from more needles. He feels immense satisfaction seeing that one of the fingers is still missing. He tries to lunge, but has to jerk back from a counter-attack instead. He goes for a bite, teeth clamping down on another one of the perilous appendages, but mushroom bitch very nearly punctures his neck in the process.

He jumps away with a frustrated growl and before he can go in again, mushroom bitch snatches Charmander’s whip off the ground and lashes it at Tommy. The boy barely avoids it, instantly on the defensive between the whip’s range and the alien’s needles. The bitch isn’t caught off guard this time, it’s much harder to get the jump on him.

There’s only one place where mushroom bitch’s needles can’t reach and on impulse, Tommy goes for it. He waits for the whip to crack down, pretending to just be jumping back to get away. But before the alien can pull the whip back again, the boy bends his knees all the way down and leaps.  

He hits the roof of the cave of course - he was shielding his head with his arms for that reason - and the impact spreads much further and deeper than he was expecting, in both his arms and the roof of the cave. Ow. The important part is he caught the dumbass alien off guard and managed to get above his stupid-ass mushroom cap head. 

As dust and debris shower down, Tommy brings his aching arms into a hammer fist and swings with his descent. He’s about to fucking Goomba stomp this bitch. The alien tries to jerk the whip up and stumble back, but it’s too late - his boots and fists slam into the mushroom head and collapse it with a burst of vibrant blue liquid.

Gross. Tumbling off of the corpse, Tommy shakes his arms to try to get rid of the sticky, alien lifeblood, but he has no luck. His heels knock against something and he whirls around, only to find Wilbur lying behind him.

The boy almost allows himself a touch of relief - but it’s at that moment that a haunting sound reaches his ears. One that he’d hoped to never hear again.

“Really, I thought I’d taught you better than this, human. ”

The darkly melodic sound is like blaring alarm bells to Tommy’s body, freezing him stiff with incomparable dread. And along with the fear, a burning, aching rage floods every muscle until it hurts. Jellyfish bitch.

He has to turn around. He has to be quick, act before the bitch can anticipate it. He has to move - to do something! Somehow, he can only stand there.

“Truly, I shouldn’t even think about sparing you at this point, ” the alien continues, the haunting sound drawing closer and closer. 

“You disobeyed me. You killed my friends. My soldiers are coming right now, and I should tear off your limbs and make you watch as they kill your worthless friends. ”

Strangely, no matter what vile, hateful things the alien says, nothing in the melody nor the translated tone ever changes from being completely even and emotionless. 

At the mention of more aliens and killing his friends, Tommy finally manages to unfreeze and whirl around. He jumps, letting out a gasp at how close jellyfish bitch has floated. His glowing tendrils still scream to the boy’s mind as deep danger, but he has no choice now.

He either runs and leaves Wilbur and Kristin to die, or he fights a fight he doesn’t expect to win. And Tommy is no stranger to terrible odds.

In a flurry, he ducks low and snatches up a blue stone, pelting it full force at the bitch’s porcelain dome. The floating sphere seems to instinctively flinch out of the way, managing to take only a glancing blow that makes lime green light flare from its runes. Jumping on the opening, Tommy kicks off the wall and scrambles for another rock.

But jellyfish bitch recovers quickly, and those tendrils are way faster than he thought. The boy can only jump back from them as they reach, and it only takes two dodges before he stumbles into Wilbur. Fuck, if only he could get the whip!

Before he can come up with a strategy, too many long tendrils are reaching out for his throat. By familiar impulse, Tommy’s jaws fly open and he chomps down on the nearest one with a shout. 

And that is his last mistake. 

Immediately, every nerve in his body is scalded with nauseating, paralyzing agony. He doesn’t feel himself fall. He doesn’t feel anything anymore besides the pain. He can barely sense anything else.

The world is a pure white rush and the only thing piercing through it is that horrible, horrible melody. There might be words inside of it, but his brain is far too spent to make sense of them.

Even as the overwhelming pain begins to fade towards something tolerable, Tommy still can’t summon the strength to move a single muscle. His back is pressed against something soft and cool that seems to be rising and falling, sending prickles of pain each time. His vision starts to swirl with harsh, ugly green and he can feel tears leaking down.

The first thing he starts to comprehend is a splash of ice water to his consciousness. “...This time I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget. ”

A strangled, raw whimper tears free from Tommy’s throat as the swirling green becomes a looming tendril, reaching down for his throat. His eyes squeeze shut as he waits in terror for the agony and the end.

And as if hearing the cue, the end answers him. Not with that horrid, dark melody, but another familiar, haunting song. 

It starts deep and guttural, quickly shifting high and piercing in a way that rattles through Tommy’s bones and shifts the very atmosphere to a bitter winter’s cold. The shriek rises within less than a moment, a final warning already far too late.

Jellyfish bitch has no expression that can twist into horror like the last one, but in that moment where the deathly shriek echoes and the body vanishes beneath him - Tommy is certain the bitch felt fear.

Tommy hits the ground with a jolting impact but he can’t tear his eyes away from dark wings materializing as piercing claws crack jellyfish’s dome like an egg. Radiation shade liquid splatters the blue cave walls and before Tommy can blink, a fully material Wilbur is plummeting back down onto him.

The boy braces for impact - mentally, his body still won’t listen to him. But the alien mostly manages to catch himself, instead curling around Tommy and dragging his wings to try and cover him.

“T…Tommy… ” he clicks out, eyes still dull and glazed.

Despite his best efforts, Tommy can’t manage to respond with anything other than more whimpers. This just makes Wilbur curl tighter around him with pained warbles. His wing shifts just enough that catches a glimpse of webbed feet stepping into the cave.

Icy air floods Tommy’s lungs and he chokes out a yelp. Wilbur flinches at the sound before immediately sputtering a hiss as several footfalls echo from behind. The alien clearly tries to whirl around but he only manages to flail clumsily - revealing five new figures storming through the tunnel.

“Boss! ” a new voice cries as it spots jellyfish bitch, followed by growls and other noises of unmistakable outrage.

The boy can’t find the air to breathe as he faces down these new adversaries, his protector hissing dutifully despite the fact that he clearly can’t pick himself off of Tommy. He’s completely helpless, staring down the barrels of five laser guns - but worst of all, he knows Wilbur will die for him first.

His protector could let every shot pass through harmlessly - he could survive this massacre despite the odds. But he won’t. No matter how futile and idiotic, he would never let harm come to Tommy. 

And now he’s going to die for it - once and for all.

At least Tommy will get to reunite with his soulmate quickly.

A dark wing blocks the helpless boy’s vision and he squeezes his eyes shut, willing himself to believe that the two of them are back on the shuttle. He’s just getting some rest, sheltered by his protector.

Blasts rattle off the cave walls and explode in Tommy’s ears. He whines, wishing more than anything that he could curl deeper into Wilbur’s comfort. Just for these last few moments.

More blasts go off and he thinks this is getting a little excessive now, but then he hears an unexpected sound. A low, deep, deadly growl. And he knows it.

The alien that cried out before suddenly makes a choking sound, and others erupt with sounds of fear and pain. The growling and grunting continues, joined by sharp whistles and hissing, though not from Wilbur anymore.

The translator finds no speech in the madness, only mortal fear and murderous rage. More blasts echo and crash alongside the brutal sounds of barbaric massacre. Tommy’s not sure how many bodies he hears fall, but it’s surely far more than five. At a few points he hears a particularly vicious growl followed by the familiar, sickening sound of bones caving under a blow.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity trapped in pitch black confusion, Wilbur slowly whistles out the greatest thing the boy will ever hear: “T…Tech…no… ”

The breath Tommy takes next is sweeter than honey, and his tears fall like warm rain. They’re saved.

“Wilbur! ” the pig alien huffs out at last. “Dad, they’re here! ”

With a clatter of hooves and claws, Wilbur’s body is lifted off of Tommy - though the alien instantly reacts with a sharp hiss and tries to pull the boy along with him.

“Shh, shh, we’ve got him, mate, ” the bird guy coos, laying a hand on Wilbur as the other arm scoops up Tommy’s limp body.

This seems to satisfy the clingy alien for now and Tommy is pressed against the softest feathered chest in the universe. Melting into the comfort, he barely even registers the bird guy moving. The boy very nearly slips into unconsciousness until a distressed chirp is rattling in the bird guy’s throat.

“Love! My soul, can you hear me? ”

Awaking with a start, Tommy tries desperately to command his vocal chords. He only succeeds in babbling out panicked baby-talk. The bird guy is stroking Kristin’s face and leaning close to her chest. Prime, he just wants to tell the guy that he accidentally hurt her! He wants to say something about the crackling energy and the light that went out! Why can he still not get any words out?

“Is she okay? ” Techno asks, mirroring Tommy’s thoughts.

The bird man lets out an anguished chirp. “She’s barely alive! Oh, dearest, you must have pushed yourself moments from Supernova… ” 

Every word is spoken like it’s tearing the alien in two, and the pig alien reacts much the same. Tommy does not like the sound of ‘Supernova’, and he can’t help but think of the swelling heat and pressure that suffocated the cave before he snuffed it out.

But it’s okay now. They’re all rushed to their saviours’ ship and placed into pods side by side. Tommy manages to inform them about Henry and they’re sure to retrieve her before taking off.

The boy is swiftly given an antidote and the moment he can somewhat move his limbs, he stumbles onto Henry’s back and urges her into the space between Wilbur and Kristin’s pods. 

The bird alien - who is hilariously named Phil, like what kind of alien name is that? - is glued to Kristin’s side, both hands pressed against the barrier beside her hand. Techno hardly seems less clingy, but he’s constantly shuffling around to each of them.

After a few minutes of miserably snuggling Henry, Tommy pleads to be let into Wilbur’s pod with him. It doesn’t take much convincing - the pod will help with the ache leftover in his muscles, anyway. Techno helps him into the pod, laying a fluffy blanket over top once the boy has crawled into place, curled in the crook of the alien’s neck.

He would curl up on his protector’s chest, but he’d probably worsen his injury that way. Techno makes a few strange snorts, suddenly insisting on tucking in the blanket tight around Tommy’s body. It’s devastatingly cozy, and he sighs contentedly.

Softly, Wilbur replies with his own content trill, head tilting unconsciously towards his treasure. Warmth like hot chocolate and snuggles by the fireplace wraps around Tommy, a heaviness forcing his eyes shut. 

This feeling is impossible to split apart as either his or Wilbur’s, but there is one thing it unmistakably is - endless, eternal love.

Tommy falls asleep, finally certain that this is nothing temporary. He won’t be returned or abandoned or rejected. He found what he was always looking for - the family he was always meant to find.

He can sleep peacefully knowing that at last, he is going home.